City Council · Regular Meeting · May 29, 2025

role? Good morning, Leonardo Williams. I'm here. Mayor Pertmp Middleton here.

Council member Baker here. Council member Calayo here. Council member Cook here. Council member Freeman and Council Member Ris here.

Thank you. Uh we had a pretty rich discussion yesterday. Uh, Cover Lock. Um, I'll go ahead and pass it over to U.

City Manager, Mr. Ferguson to get us kicked off. Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Prom, members of council. Uh, good to see you again this morning.

I think this will forever brand me as a nerdy government wonk, but I really had a lot of fun yesterday. Um uh in in all seriousness, you know, we we um we say it all the time that the the budget is the living breathing manifestation of of the community's values. And so when we get to this point where we are sitting with you, the elected leaders, walking you through our our work to try and respond to the direction you've given us

and what we've heard from the community. Uh it's very satisfying. It's very uh very fulfilling uh to hear uh where we've gotten it right and it's also really helpful to hear where uh you may want us to make some changes. So I really appreciate and want to commend the council for the seriousness with which you plug in at these sessions.

It is clear that uh you are being very thoughtful about what you're hearing and about what you're seeing. Uh it is it it honors us uh to hear your level of questioning. Uh and so I appreciate that and just want to tell you I thought yesterday was a really great working session. Um to that end I I do want to start today's session by letting you know that you know we did take uh careful notes yesterday had a meeting yesterday afternoon where we processed some of the feedback you've given us and and we do have some thoughts um about how to respond to some of your questions or areas where you expressed an interest in more information. I want to hold any discussion of that until the end of today's meeting so that we see how today

develops. Uh but I did want to reassure you before we get started that uh that we do have some uh plans and different options that uh we will refine as we hear uh kind of what your interests are today. So yesterday's agenda uh we introduced uh some of the broader topics that impact the entire budget. things that span multiple departments or project categories like the CIP that that touch a lot of departments uh only uh had a few very departmental specific presentations yesterday primarily around the engagement department.

Today's set of uh presentations do focus a bit more in on uh several key departments. Uh and again it's always um a little bit of a of a challenging exercise to decide which of these presentations to bring for you. I want to say uh without question there are a number of departments who aren't presenting to you today that that do very critical work for the city and that you are deeply uh passionate about but we tried to focus on departments that were seeing changes or areas where this budget uh is

emphasizing some new or different investment so that we used your time uh in the budget presentations most most t mostly to target uh those budget decisions that that I recommend in my proposed budget uh to see if we got it right or if we need to make changes. So, please don't ever assume uh either as council members or as department directors that making this list is uh synonymous with who's important and who's not important, but rather just who has issues in the budget that you might want to be aware of or who's uh in in the case of this year with reorganization, we have a number of presentations um just to highlight how certain changes are being implemented. So, with that, we've got a good uh lineup for you today of uh topics that meet that uh meet that criteria and I'll conclude my comments there unless you have any questions for me or Christina and I don't know Christina if you have any introductory comments otherwise we can go straight to presentations.

Um no, I don't have anything. Um I think u manager Ferguson has um laid out the day for you. So, I just want to welcome you to our second day of budget retreats and I'm going to turn it over to our planning director, Sarah Young, who's going to talk to you about um their department. All right, let's see.

Does that work? All right. Well, good morning everybody. I am excited to talk to you a bit about the new and improved uh city county planning and development department.

So our organizational chart is going from 50 current FTEES to 110 with six additional proposed in the budget. And you can see that uh currently we have two assistant directors. We're going to be uh adding a third assistant director to handle not all of the new additions to the department, but the majority of

them. All right. In terms of budget, our total budget is just over 14 million spread across four different funds. Um so more than doubling our old budget, uh which corresponds to the more than doubling in personnel, etc.

We are a personnel heavy department still with the majority um 13 million or so going to personnel cost and just over 1 million in operating costs. In terms of the reorganization, this is really an opportunity that has been long in the works. I think for over a decade we have been talking about combining and consolidating development review functions that currently live across multiple departments into one department. planning has always been kind of the steward of the development review process and so it made sense to consolidate uh those functions with us. There are a lot of benefits to this approach. Uh but in general, if I could kind of sum it up very succinctly, it would be that better coordination is

going to result in better service for our customers. A little bit about some measures. The first chart is the total number of cases. So this year we're going to be at a little more than 6,000 cases I think total.

Um so imagine a 50 person and these are just planning only numbers here. So imagine 50 person department uh working with you know 6,000 cases a year. That's quite a high volume and I'm excited to say that with that high volume uh we are right now at about 98% on time. Our goal is 95% on time.

The industry benchmark is 85% on time. So 98% on time is something that we are very very proud of. In addition, we have a uh combined development services center, our customer service contacts that we share with the inspections department uh our portion of planning contacts. So these are people that are coming in to get

assistance uh either in person, via email, or on the phone. And this year we're going to hit about 11,000 individual contacts just through the customer service center. In addition, we also have a zoning enforcement arm as you all know. Uh we are close to about 1,400 cases this year um which is up a little bit but we have a very active um enforcement group that primarily works proactively although they do obviously respond to complaints as well.

bit on budget highlights. These are our budget requests that are in the budget. Uh the first is kind of a necessary thing which is the public hearing notices for the new UDO. We are required since we're going to be changing the zoning on pretty much every parcel to send a direct mail notice to every property owner. Uh that is expected to be way more than $300,000. Um that

number uh is looks very exact but it was based on an estimate. That number might change um and we will obviously um do whatever it takes to get those mail notices out. So that is not the reason we had to ask for additional money is our whole mailing budget is not anywhere close to this for the year. So this is kind of a one-time thing.

We are also asked for funding for a multimodal traffic impact analysis and that would be to hire a consultant to develop a program to do this. Right now you all are familiar with TIA's traffic impact analyses. Those uh are used when a development is proposed to assess the impact on the roadway network and to uh require improvements from that developer to kind of offset those impacts. those impacts are just limited to vehic motor vehicle traffic impacts. And so we need a way and we this is another project that we've been talking about for probably 10 maybe even 15 years a

non-motorie impacts and require improvements um for bike ped or other rolling walking related infrastructure. Next up is a city county open space plan uh renamed slightly based on some JCCPC feedback. Uh this would be a plan that would be countywide including the city. It would look at uh priorities for uh conservation for acquisition um what should just be preserved natural open space versus what could be um programmed space.

uh it would help both the city in terms of its recreational goals as well as the county in their open space acquisition program. And so it would help get us all on the same page in terms of uh priorities and help prioritize uh spaces that we could work with uh partner nonprofits or the private development community to also save. Next up, we have our historic resources inventory update. This is a

project that's going to be the funding will be broken out over three years. Um we have a variety of historic districts and landmarks. The historic districts are governed by historic preservation plans which assign each property a status contributing or non-contributing and different rules apply based on that status. when we last uh when we created the consolidated criteria about 10 10 years ago now we put in a recommendation that every 10 years we update those uh statuses of properties and so this is the reerveying of all of our districts in order to do that again over three years there also a number of FTEES of positions that were uh requested and so I want to talk a little bit about them because I think they're very germanine to our reorganization and new structure. The first are a couple of senior engineering specialists in the ride-of-way management group. These are folks that would be uh permitting and

inspecting privately installed utilities in developments where the ride ofway has not yet been accepted by the city. So we are seeing a lot of issues with utility companies creating damage that then developers either on the hook to fix um which often gets passed on to of course the future homeowners or that the city then has to fix uh you know at the time of acceptance or after. And so this is intended to avoid that to um hold those utilities accountable through a permanent inspection process and to minimize the amount of damage and and repair. There are two senior engineers under infrastructure permitting.

One of them will inspect private access and common areas. So in Durham, we have essentially three types of roads. I'll use roads in air quotes, right? We have public streets that meet public street standards. We have private streets that still have to meet public street standards. And then we have this thing called common

um common private access and common areas. They are essentially glorified driveways that in many cases look and feel like streets uh but are private and don't have to meet public street standards. And there are a lot of I think concerns with our lack of inspection of those areas because to the public they again function and feel and look like streets and they're the way that they access their properties. And so putting in staff that will be able to review um and inspect these is really important.

The other senior engineer uh is just an additional engineer for water sewer permitting. Uh there is a very high volume and there's currently only one person that reviews those permits. So adding an additional person will help speed up that process. Then there are two principal engineers in development review. There has been about a 28% increase in development review applications that that group reviews. The last time that they added positions was in fiscal year

18. And so this will help speed up the review timelines. It will allow one of the things that we've been hearing from the development community they're really interested in is single reviewers through the lifespan of a case. So adding this additional capacity will allow staff to be able to put that into play.

And I want to note that these all six positions uh while new, they're going to be paid for by fee increases. 2 million extra through those fee increases and that will cover all of these positions. Just confirm. So that's not those aren't FT is transferring in from the other department.

The these are actually new to these are these are new. These were submitted by public works. Um and so they will live with those group of folks that are moving over from public works. Uh but these are these are new positions.

Yep. In terms of next steps related to the reorganization, we are working with the city attorney's office to update city code. As you can imagine, there are a

lot of things in city code that give different authority to different departments uh related to infrastructure and that is all going to be consolidated now. Um so you will be seeing some updates to city code come down the road. We are also, and this is actually already started, I'm meeting with the development community and pertinent staff to identify areas for process improvements. We've had a couple meetings already, and I'm meeting right now on a monthly basis until we get through all of the issues that are being highlighted to me.

And then, uh, most importantly, probably maybe for me in my daily work is recruiting a new assistant director. So, I'm hoping to get that underway as soon as possible. And that is it. Hopefully I talked a little slower than the last time I presented to you.

Thank you so much. I when you can understand, you know, such a complex department so well, uh, it feels really good. I'm really proud of the updates that are coming. Um, but comments. Yes,

Council Member Freeman. Thank you, um, for the presentation. I I I just had a few questions, but I do want to say that I can I it'll be interesting to see how this works. Um I'll be I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

I um I did first want to just ask you're meeting with the development community. Is there any resident representation in there that conversation at all? So the res we have heard a lot from residents through the comprehensive plan um and through our customer service contacts in terms of the things that they the challenges that they have. I will say that the issues that we're seeing with the development community are large-scale infrastructure issues, right?

So individual residents are not, you know, uh laying miles of water line and having issues with those inspections. So we're talking about very large infrastructure problems. Um, we continue to refine our process when we hear individual resident concerns. Um, but I will say that I get very few

resident complaints and I get a lot of developer complaints. One of the biggest concerns that I've heard from kind on the resident side relates to I think some of the things that we're going to put in place in the UDO in terms of protecting residents when there is infill kind of in tight situations. you know, how are we making sure that contractors are on their best behavior and are being considerate to their neighbors, which is a difficult thing, but that's definitely um one of our biggest things to tackle. And just um are the meetings that you're having public or is information that you're gathering public?

Uh it is not public. Um we are I meet with folks routinely all the time. Um but I will be happy to share kind of a summary of what comes from those meetings. Absolutely. And then um I just want to note for the rightway management the notice we received a message yesterday regarding a property owner who said they didn't hear they

didn't get a notice. Is there any tearing of notices like where um especially for uh I think it was specifically like a rightaway or some type of request for their property to be like taken in and a and a price paid. Is there a certified mail involved with that? An easement.

That's it. An easement. So it's Oh, but but is there a is there a notice theoring that occurs in any way where it's certified as opposed to just So we're we're not directly involved in condemnation actions. Um I would defer to the attorney's office or the general services department real estate um on what kind of notice is required for that. There's a response in our inbox as well. But in regards to like making sure that notices are received when cases are um really close to your or at or next to

your property. So in general, you know, we we've talked before there's kind of there's legislative actions, quasi judicial and administrative. And for administrative actions, uh there is not a required notice. Um, so you know, if someone something as simple as someone, you know, builds a fence or pours a new driveway or something, they're not required to give you notice that they're doing something on their property.

Um, however, that said, my earlier comment about making sure that people are as considerate as they can be towards their neighbors. That's definitely something that we are going to be looking at through the UDO is like what is the appropriate notice for folks for different types of actions. And then I just wanted to know if there was any thought around or any consideration around whether or not an additional um planning commission meeting might be necessary like if there's a level that you think that you'll that you would consider that an additional planning

commission meeting like during the year to discuss like an additional like during the month is once a it's once a month right now. So right now we have we have really caught up with cases. You know, a few years ago you probably remember hearing folks complain that it was taking two years to get to council. Uh now our average case gets to council in less than a year.

We're about a 10-month average for reasonzoning cases. Um so I think that's pretty good considering that we have um legal requirements. Right now we are I don't see a need honestly to have more than one planning commission case a month um because the the cadence is pretty steady and they're they're taking usually five or six cases to planning commission a month and then we end up kind of dividing those out across your two monthly meetings so that you have you know threeish cases. And so the cadence that you would probably look at is if it

were to move up to six or like is there any number you think for for planning commission cases? I think probably the most they can handle in one night. You know, their meetings start earlier than yours. They start at um 5 or 5:30.

Um but about six cases is about the max I think they can handle. And remember that sometimes they also have other things that go to them, plans or whatnot. So we have to factor that in. And then just for the city manager, just thinking about the logic behind the revenue, is there any thing you want to share about why it's like um I think it was like 2 million from water and sewer.

And I'll probably ask uh director Royen to answer that question just about, you know, I assume you're talking about the the various fund sources. Th those are going to track with the staff who are providing review in those various areas. So as part of the reorganization um you know well as part of a

development review case staff from various disciplines do the review and when those staff are based out of a certain fund that's where the the revenue is coming from but let me let Christina elaborate on that. Uh yes Christina Rearden budget and management services. Yes, this is similar to other staff that do similar positions. So the the split that you're seeing is something that we have done traditionally with other staff that are doing those sort of functions.

So it's based on the type of work that they're doing and the kind of funding source would be split across different funds. I think that's all for right now. Thank you. Yep.

Go ahead. Thank you, M. Appreciate the presentation. Um uh I had a couple questions.

The first is and this is sort of sort of bigger picture. So obviously you've had a continued high volume of like permits and planning reviews as you document there and it seems like having the I like the idea of sort of streamlining some of these processes from from transportation from from water management public works water management. Y that make a lot of sense.

I guess my question is as you look sort of forward like maybe the next like three to five years. Um is your is there any sense that like that the development sort of piece is changing potentially with this like e I mean like tariffs right and all this kind of these shocks of the economy. Um we've seen we've seen in the past recessions that have that have occurred nationwide. We've been pretty immune to that.

We've got Duke University in the park and other universities. This one seems different. I mean Duke is like now looking at layoffs, right? The the the uh the resolution we did for the aid organizations like RTI shrinking.

So those are like serious challenges to our economy we haven't seen in the past. So just wondering what your like crystal ball maybe like where like what does this look like? We've also talked about the TPO about like these long range plans out 30 years or whatever but in the near future are we like look are things gonna maybe change? What's your sense of that? So one of that's an excellent question. One of the things that we do kind of all year long routinely is track kind of the

development trends, right? Um, and I call the resoning process like the early indicator. If people if that starts, right, if people really start um slowing down in terms of their early entitlements, that tends to be our first kind of signal that something might be happening. Um, we have seen we did see a bit of a slowdown, but it has leveled off.

And so I don't now what will happen in the coming months um you know we're watching very closely because of all the things that you mentioned. Um I think right now applications are still strong and so we haven't seen that happen yet. That doesn't mean it won't happen. Um but right now everything seems to be kind of level.

Well, thanks for tracking that. My other question just generally one thing you didn't mention was UDL rewrite. So I'm just kind of curious for those of us that don't sit on the joint city county planning committee, give us a quick sense of like where that is and what we can expect in the next year with the UDR rewrite. Sure. So we um have kicked off our next module of engagement um and in

fact there is a meeting this evening at WG Pearson which is a public meeting. We are expanding our hours for office hours which have been very popular. We're at the library twice a month. So, I think now we're at the library four times a month for the next few months.

Um, that's a time where people can sit down one-on-one with with us and ask questions about their specific property because the further you get into the rewrite, the more technical it is, uh, the more people really need to understand like how it plays out on their specific parcel. Um, so that is underway. the we are expecting uh to hopefully have a full draft. Looking at Bo, what's our full draft date?

Fall. I like how he vaguely said fall. Mysteriously like um so we do have, you know, other modules are in with staff and we're reviewing them, but obviously we have to work through an internal process before we go to the public with them. Um I think we just received the

beginnings of the last module which uh is the administrative stuff or are about to. Yeah, we just did. Um so we're working through the draft. The draft is almost complete.

Uh as soon as we have a full draft that will also be released to the public. So they've been seeing chunks. Um we have made some changes based on the first round of comments that we engagement that we did in terms of some mapping logic that has changed. You know, we heard a lot from residents uh about wanting to preserve more agricultural opportunities.

So, we changed did some remapping um in some areas to do that. Um change some logic related to some of the kind of mixeduse districts and where they were located as well. And so, in terms of the so like draft full plan by the fall and that means by like 2020. So, we don't Yeah, we hope to have the full draft and get to planning commission before the end of the year. Um, so I don't think that elected officials will see this till after the first of the year. 26.

Yep. And then that at that point, we're looking at a full draft. So, so maybe like mid 26 it'll be Yep. finalized.

Right. Thank you. Yep. Any other on this side?

Yeah. Council member Cook. you that presentation. Um, I have some specific questions about some of the budgetary asks.

Um, and I know you talked about this already, but I'm hoping you can go back. So, the 365 382 number for the public hearing notices. You said that was for the the new UDO public hearing notices. I had I know that there's a state law that requires us to send out specific notices, but I had thought that we were trying in our new UDO rewrite to actually decrease as much as we could the some of the like methods of posting and other things that would save us some money.

So, is there not that happening at the same time? So, yeah, that's a good that's a good question. I'll explain the difference. So, state law requires that for some things we post a

sign on the property, we put an ad in the newspaper, and we send direct mail notice to the property owners. The part that we are trying to seek legislative change on is the newspaper because that is where we're spending a lot of money and not really um I don't think that that the residents are really getting their notice that way. Um and so we we are seeking legislative authority which lots of other places have to basically post online as an alternative. Um which we already do as a bonus.

Um so that's that piece. There's no change for mailed notice. We in fact state law only requires that we send mailed notice to properties immediately adjacent. So like one property out. um we actually go a thousand feet out as we believe that you know trying to get more people aware of what's happening and informed and for them to have the ability to participate in the process if they want to is important. So we're firm believers in

direct mail notice. Um and we do have a budget for that normally for all of our other cases. That budget just isn't big enough to handle something like the UDO where we're going to have to send out I think it's like 154,000 notices. This is these are notices not written into the UDO.

These are notices about the new ED. Correct. Okay, that makes more sense. Yeah.

Um, any update on that legislative action? I have not heard lately. Monday. Monday of this week.

Okay. Well, that shows No. Great. Well, it's been a long week thus far and it's only three days in.

Okay. Um, great. So, yeah, I would It sounds like we're getting updates on that. I'll check my email, but um certainly like thinking about that as a method of saving some some dollars. Um the multimodal traffic impact analysis, that $60,000 is just for one employee that is for a consultant to develop a program

for us. Okay. So then it would be something that we could would have and then we would require uh that program as part of the application process for new de development. So it would be an ongoing you know it would be uh a kind of a methodology.

Yeah. Right. That then would be used for all applications and developers would have to follow that methodology. Um so for the senior engineers that are assisting with the infrastructure permitting you were saying that they're getting sent out to streets that are private.

even if they are doing reviews of those streets, what what is the use of that? Why would we send people out? So, they are they are not currently doing that. Um however this is an area where you know residents residents don't know the difference between what's private and public first of all and while a developer still has standards that they have to meet you know the

pavement needs to be um you know meet the specifications the city has for for pavement for curbing for all these things. there is no real mechanism right now to really inspect that um and and hold them accountable. So this additional position and you know Marvin, if you need to come rescue me, feel free, man. Um I see him getting up.

I see him getting up. Phone a friend. Phone a friend. You want to talk in more detail since I just two positions, right?

Right. They're they do two different things. Okay. Yeah.

So, Margaret Williams public works. So, right now, our rightway management program, we have forgot how many people we have actually doing rightway inspections. Those two positions would help with what people normally see like in townous for example. They think they're public streets that the city would be responsible for, but they're really just glorified, like Sarah said, glorified

driveways. But they still need to be built to a certain standard because a lot of time what happens is that after so many years people in those communities want to turn them over to the city for maintenance because their HOAs may not necessarily have the funds to maintain them. But if we didn't inspect it on the front end, we're then going to require those developments or those homeowners to actually go back and build everything to current city standards. So what we're trying to do with these two positions is actually have the ability to go out, inspect those during the initial development process to make sure that they're being built to some type of standard that's close to either our standard or NC DOT standards if they're close to NC DOT rideway.

So that if they do if we do get the request in the future to have them turned over for public maintenance that we have some type of documentation of record of what was actually built and also so that they're not substandard at the time that the HOA inherits them from the builder. Right. But so this is it's literally a just in case because it's not a just in

case because we have because it's our code. They have to be up to our code. They have to be, but because they're being built, they're private access private roads essentially right now, we we don't have the capacity to inspect them. So adding the additional positions in to go through that inspection process gives us some reassurance that they're actually being built to a standard.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And you were saying that those two positions are doing there's one person that's going to be doing that and one person or both of those positions are So it's one position for that. A second senior engineer is actually an additional position uh to help issue water sewer permits.

So these are the permits when a developer is laying out new large scale water sewer infrastructure. Um there's only currently one person that does that and there is a a bit of a delay because they're more permits than she can reasonably handle. Um I have I have two follow-up questions about that. The first is um you got a lot of Well, no, I'm gonna ask that one

second. Okay, let me ask this one first. Is there a conversation in the new UDO rewrite about how we designate driveways versus streets? Because I feel like there have been several things that we get a lot of townhouse developments and there have been several instances where we've seen this happening and obviously y'all are doing a whole we're hiring a whole new person to come on to do inspections about this specific thing.

Is there is there any conversation about maybe widening that definition so that we don't end up with all of these parking lots as opposed to streets? So that is a conversation that we have had I think multiple times over the years with the development community and we keep hearing the same thing that that is an option that they want to keep because it is a less expensive option. And so particularly for sometimes for smaller projects, uh they, you know, you're not necessarily going to put in a brand new street for a 20 townhouse development, right? And we're doing we're seeing a

lot of small infill type developments. And so they they need an option that helps keep the cost of construction reasonable and also scales with kind of the size of of developments so that smaller developments, you know, again, you're not going to run like a really short street for, you know, 10 town houses on each side. I mean, it I understand that it's less expensive for them, but it isn't now now costing us in a different way, right? which is so I'm not going to say I don't necessarily agree with their argument because I think anytime that you have private infrastructure that cost gets passed on to the homeowner anyway because the HOA has to maintain it.

So I think kind of the difference in maybe upfront product cost is offset by you now have a monthly HOA bill that is probably higher. So that's not one that I necessarily agree with. I'm just sharing what they always share with us. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it would be something that I would be interested in revisiting as we're looking through the

UDO rewrite. Yep. Um, my next question, just to follow up on this, is we've gotten we we you y'all's department has gotten a lot of new full-time employees due to some rearranging, right? Because you just listed Yeah.

How many did you say that we were going from 50 to to 110? And so, you've listed six new ones. So, I'm imagining we're accumulating a lot of people. Okay.

Um what are those folks just coming over with already sort of preassigned jobs? Are we are we moving folks around? So those those folks all are bringing over all of their responsibilities, right? These are folks that are already they're reviewing plans.

They're already reviewing um you know water sewer permits um uh right of right ofway stuff. They're the transportation folks that review TAS. So they all have

current jobs that are related to development review. They're just now going to be doing those the same exact jobs under one department instead of being spread out into multiple departments and and bringing them all together under one umbrella. we're not seeing like a a major increase in efficiency that would allow folks to spread in different ways. So that is one of my goals particularly with for instance u inspections right we are sending a bunch of different departments have inspectors going out to the exact same site and looking at sometimes very similar things.

Um, so like I've already talked with transportation about trying to merge some of their inspections functions with my own planning inspections functions um to try and gain some efficiencies there. We don't need to send two people to look at exact almost exactly the same thing on almost exactly the same piece of property. Um, that I'm hoping will buy additional bandwidth for one of the things that I would like to do is speed up the development review process as much as

possible. And so I think where we can gain efficiencies, we will see that translated into more streamlined, faster reviews. So that is definitely um my goal. I have been meeting with um all these various teams and getting to kind of learn a little bit more about under the hood about what they do and how they do it.

And so I'm identifying like a list of things that we can start tackling after July 1. Um the list is long. I'm gonna maybe be here longer than I wanted to be. And let me add to that just because it speaks to some broader talking points I've shared around the the whole reorganization, which is I I think in a number of areas where we are combining staff and combining functions, we are optimistic that there are going to be efficiencies and cost savings as a result of reorganization. That said, uh until we got the reorganization in place, uh solidified new work procedures, uh in the case of the engagement department, really uh building out sort of what the

work plan looks like, I didn't want to be presumptuous about presuming or promising to the council in this uh budget uh process that savings were going to acrue. So, this is uh one of those areas, probably one of the key areas where I think we want to give the department some space to put the new uh put the new structure in place and then determine and track. But, but those savings and efficiencies are ones that we absolutely are going to be tracking and be happy to come back to the council and report out on on what we're seeing. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean I guess I'm just hearing that several of our other departments that have had kind of this like mass sort of reorg um have not come to us with new requests for hires. And so that was why I was asking about because y'all have y'all have several new positions in addition to bringing in quite a lot of people from other places. Um so 13 million is personnel, 14 million is the total

budget for this year. Um what what was it last year? So the planning only budget. So at this point I'm just curious.

I think we were at like 6 two or something. Let's see. Someone's looking it up. Great.

Not that important. I was just curious to know the six millionish. Okay. Um I think those are my questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Baker. Anything? Thank you for being here, Sarah.

Um, so the UDO and MAP, are we expecting to do those at the same time? In terms What do you mean? So, we're going to rewrite the UD, we're rewriting the UDO and then also we've got the public notices that going to go out for the for for the map change. For the map change, are those going to happen simultaneously?

Yes. Okay. They will have an effective date like our effective date will be months out, probably six months out because we need to have time for people to adjust and

figure out what they're doing. Um, which is what we did last time when we adopted the current UDO. It was the official effective date was like 6 months later. And then the the cost of the notices, is that for planning commission public hearing and city council public hearing?

Okay. Correct. Okay. So if they're if if planning commission says we we we want to delay on this that's an extra hundred something thousands of as long as they continue it uh it is not because a continuence we don't have to relet letter notice.

Okay. Okay. Um all right just wanted to make make sure everybody was um clear on that because we don't want to be spending Yep. an extra hundred something thousand dollars for notices.

Um, the multimodal TIA. So, I actually don't know much about multimodal TIA. I've never worked with those before. But, uh, TIA's like you can justify getting things offsite.

Is that the same idea with a multimodal TIA? Because, you know, otherwise we can just require them to build wide sidewalks or whatever. Yes. And in our research, we haven't found anyone that does a multimodal TIA.

So hopefully we're going to be breaking new ground. Okay. Awesome. Um and we said fall of this year for the UDO rewrite full roughly.

Yes. Okay. And like that's a full draft and then it will go through review and planning commission and and go through that process as well. Okay.

Okay. Um, so all all I want to say is, you know, we we've looked at a lot of amazing work that's being done by all of our uh different departments, parks, transportation, infrastructure, um, transit, um, we got development, land use, urban design, all of these these things are happening and it's really community planning that brings them all together and ties them all together. And so this is the planning

and development department. Um, but I don't want us to lose sight of the planning. Um, because when we look at the org chart, we see one one box in there is is is planning and just about everything else is development review. And it is vital.

Planning is so vital for making sure that all the different pieces that we're working on are coming together and coming together efficiently. It's a lot more efficient to lay down the pipes and bury the lines and then build the street than to build the street and the sidewalk and then tear it up. And having that long long range comprehensive vision of what's happening and pulling all the pieces together and knowing a little bit about a lot of different things is such a vital function of uh an efficient city but also in a city that that is working um innovatively working with community residents working on with best practices and evidence-based practices. And so I I think it's very very important that we don't that we don't lose sight of of that planning function within this

department. So um wanted to thank you for coming in and answering our questions. And mayor, if I may just follow on that, I appreciate council member Baker's comments and would also just point out that um I I think there are a number of elements of the planning department's work plan this year that speak to that that don't necessarily show up in the budget. Uh, but I'd want to reassure council that I think that's a conversation that that we fully uh lean into and agree with.

I would note that the one item on the plan, the uh the uh open space city county open space plan is is one that I think speaks to that, but I think there are a number of other initiatives that uh DCM Chadwell and Director Young and myself have talked about in the coming year that speak to some of the things council has talked about in particular. You know, we we've heard from the council and from departments that having a more coordinated uh conversation and approach towards uh land banking or uh or profers from developers that speak to different uh city needs is something that the council's expressed interest in. That's something Director Young has been very

open to. So, I I just want you to know uh we definitely hear you on that. And while it doesn't necessarily all translate into budget asks, it certainly does translate into work plan. Yeah.

Sorry. Okay, I actually had one more question that I got reminded me. Um, the city county open space plan, is there county input moneywise and how much it's going into that? So, I'm going to defer to budget Christina on that.

I I will say this that the the way that the funding for the planning department works is after application fees come off the top, the city and the county split 5050. So theoretically, and if I'm misspeaking, Christina can jump in. Um theoretically 50/50 of this will be paid for by the county by virtue of their split, how that's orchestrated.

somebody else starting, please. Uh, no, I think uh, director Young um explained that well. Yeah. 4 for last year for their budget.

So, I just wanted to make sure we circled back on that. But yes, so we um, essentially the county's, you know, portion is after fees. So, 50/50. Just a followup.

And you are reviewing fees right now, right? And there's some consideration around a sliding like fee scale is so we did a comprehensive fee adjustment kind of across the board last year for planning fees. Uh, our planning fees already take into account kind of some equity concerns in terms of um larger things cost more and smaller things for them to remain more accessible cost less. Kind of our thinking. Um, that's easier to do

because we are not a department that is fully funded by fees, right? So, we are subsidizing through city and county um some of those costs. So, um, that already exists. The increases that I mentioned earlier, those really are public works related fee increases.

So, I can't speak to any thinking, um, on those. Um, and also, you know, these were those fees and these new positions were things that were started before the reorg really took shape. So, I don't know if you need to add anything. No.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation.

A couple things. Um following up on Council Member Cooks, my my question is that I understand the positions are a few based, but the I mean there's a number of things on there that would So the UDO public hearing notices, the traffic impact analysis, the city, county open space, and historic resources. That's all budget I mean department dollars and

not um fee, right? And so is the county going 5050 on all of those things, not just the open space plan because it affects like the UDO's for every single resident. It doesn't matter if they're a city or county resident, right? So because of the way that the funding structure is set up, they don't go 50/50 like online items, right?

It's a some total total. Okay. And it gets halfed. Perfect.

Thank you. Um I think and I I I do want to acknowledge that in the organizational chart there are eight FTEEs dedicated to community planning. So, I see that um we're doing uh a good job there as far as putting uh real effort into what Council Member Baker addressed. Um and I just want to say that this is a really good reorg.

I mean, we hear this a lot. Um not having a different person review each piece of a case. Um and then those folks not necessarily being aligned on what they see because everyone has interpretation. And so then at the end of the day, it's the applicant. And sometimes that applicant

is an affordable housing provider. I know that in this space we like to always assume it's a villain. Uh it doesn't matter. It can be anybody who's got a permit in.

Could be affordable housing provider. It can be a school. It can be uh anyone on the other side. Um it could be just an individual homeowner and they're going to have to go through the same review process.

So I think that this is a a great efficiency. I know that there was some shifts um happening here and I look forward to, you know, next year seeing potentially some of these efficiencies and and how that plays out for your department and just citywide. Um and then I just want to thank as a person who's been on JCCPC for a number of years, I just want to thank you and your staff. I think y'all are probably one of the departments that has the most liaison all across the city.

Um from everywhere from uh DOSS to uh JCCPC uh appearance commission, right? y'all are in lots and lots of places and you do a ton of our community engagement and so I just want to thank you and all your staff for being um just really dedicated public servants. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Director.

Good to see you. Let me echo uh Council Member Cabayro's um commendation for the staff. Both of us JCCPC for many years. Both of us past uh chairs.

Uh so we have a pretty unique perch to see just how much work you do and how hard uh you do it. Um for me just a real couple of quick questions. I'm excited about this reorg. Uh some of the stuff just has to be stress tested.

It's got to be real world uh you know driven plane is shiny on the ground. We've got to put it in the air. So some questions will be answered when we get into actual uh deployment. But I am I am really really encouraged uh by at least the initial uh read um and the potential for efficiencies.

And I appreciate the manager's modesty, but it certainly bodess well, I think, for us from a first first blush. Just two quick questions. Some of the the on a couple of your slides, um, shared economic prosperity is branded at the top. Uh, and the the slide seemed I didn't read the slide as germaine to shared economic

prosperity. Was that I'll let uh where did Christina go? Do you want to talk about how they're categorized? I'm just wondering was that supposed to imply that these particular slides were speaking to Sure.

Um can the slides that you're referring to? Yeah. A couple of slides once uh have shared economic you see the Yeah. at the top.

Yeah. And that is because they sit in the shared economic prosperity goal um as part of our strategic plan. So the strategic plan when you were when you're looking at that um plan these are these particular initiatives fall under that goal. Interesting.

So the items in this these slides right here are are are are relevant to shared economic prosperity that the way it's currently the way our current strategic plan is structured. Yes. And we could get you a link to our strategic plan to kind of show you how that's laid out. that might

make more sense as well too because we're just pulling these out. We're just pulling out initiatives you know for for um or you know um measures for this particular um uh presentation but I think it might be helpful and I think that's because basically all development review functions are kind of deemed to support economic prosperity in terms of you know development economic development etc. Sure. Sure.

I I guess just historically when we've used the term shared we were thinking more like um participation in the supply chain for you know historically uh left out folk. I maybe I'm just thinking about how we've historically employed uh deploy uh employed the term shared economic press but that's fine. It's it's no big deal. Yeah.

And I will say these are not the only um measures in in that goal as well too. So no. Okay. So these are just a portion of that um you know overarching goal as well too. Gotcha. My second question and counselor you you you had a der dramatic return uh because this this question

might um I was actually killing time till you got back. Could you with respect to the UDO rewrite, could you preview for us to the best of your ability what new or augmented powers hereto for this council has not exploited that we are in a position to codify and write into our UDL whether it's inclusionary zoning, whether it's building materials, um whether it's compelling parks, what what can we capture and what is what are we previewing that we can capture legally? through the force of law that hereto for we have not exploited as a council. Yeah. I I would say that I don't think there is anything in terms of authority that you all have not already utilized. I asked I I've sat through a lot of lectures uh from from all kinds of of folk um about what we should be doing and what we can do and what we've chosen

not to do. And I I just want for the public to hear that and and whatever we are not using or exploiting whatever we can get I hope that um through this UDO rewrite we will fully do that. If we are not then the truth needs to be told. It needs to be trumpeted and made clear that when we have these debates wherever we may fall on an issue the proposition that somehow there's something that we are not using or that we are not availing ourselves of is a canard.

It's it's a it's a false uh uh point and I think that for the you know for the sake of integrity and for the sake of our public square some of the debates we have that needs to be said. With that said, we can go at each other, you know, on whatever point we want. But I want it to be known that if we could dictate some of these things, we would um and if we have that power and that power is available to us, I fully expect us in the UDO rewrite to get it. And if we don't get it, then we should tell folk we can't. Um, so there it is. But thank

you so much. I'm excited about this reorgan. Appreciate the work the department does. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you. Um, thank you.

I I just gave an example of a a company I toured, um, an architecture firm and how they had a really big open floor plan with so many different disciplines in the uh, in the business in the company. Um, but they put everything under one roof, under one roof. uh from interior design to uh the engineering sector to just the engagement and it this is a private company and they are extremely efficient a very successful company right here in Durham and we basically are you guys are doing the same thing you know you're you're seeking efficiency to so we so that we can expand our capacity um and I appreciate that I I don't have a I don't have you know criticism here I was to may approach him's point. I was wondering how this lined up with shared

economic prosperity, but I haven't talked about that a lot because I'm just waiting on the refresh. Um, but I I I get it, you know, the extension of it. I get where where you head it with it. Um, and I guess how it's identified in what is identified now.

Um, but yeah, I I like where we're going with it. I I think it makes sense on the asks. Um I and I that's a really good point, man, Pro Tim, because we get, you know, scolded a lot by, you know, the city council just passed a 4-3 vote and they should have done this, but they didn't. I hear it all the time.

Um and anyone that preaches that is it could be considered misleading. Um and we just are not forceful by putting the truth out there. And and so I I agree whatever we can legally do that would be in the best interest of the public, I hope that we explore that in the new YO rewrite so that we can

stop the politics and actually do people work. Um that being said, thank you and let's uh move on. Thank you. Thanks to all the team over there, smart folks in planning.

I do want to offer just a clarification. I think most council members picked this up, but I do want to point out that the the new positions that you heard about in this position are B supported development view review supported positions. These are not uh positions that are supported by tax dollars. And so none of the tax rate increase supports any of the positions that um that Sarah just presented to you. that money would I mean it's a different source of funding but if we weren't using that for fees we could use that fee money for other things right it's not the fees are not explicitly only for those purposes let me let no I I essentially believe those those fees are to create a fee supported development review system

we would not we would not reallocate those revenues towards some other city purpose they are specifically for that purpose so under state law we have to use those fees for the purpose that they're collected for. We cannot uh they're supposed to be charged to recoup costs directly associated with processing of applications. We're not supposed to use them for other purposes, right? But there's other staff that would fit like there's other places where would fit in that definition. It's not we didn't have to create these exact staff to to utilize those fees, right? We do I mean we do have uh broad ability you know development fees in general are a very broad category and certainly you know we don't trace dollar for dollar an application fee to the staff person that it's funding but we do do it kind of programmatically right so if we're saying that we're raising fees and we also trying to just keep good faith and transparency if we're raising

fees for x thing to deliver a better service on x thing then we feel like we need to do And I think in the in the course of this budget conversation, the point I would just want to highlight is if if we were to if council were to choose not to approve one of these positions, the the revenue would not be available to go fund some other desire somewhere else in the budget. That that revenue has to stay in the planning and development space to support the planning and development function. So, it's not we can't pay for a widget if we eliminate one of those positions. Those positions are specifically offset by uh fees in the development review process.

Thank you. I support the motive. Williams, welcome. Is that any better? Go.

Well, good morning. My name is Margaret Williams with public works department. I'll be doing a joint presentation this morning with Wayne Fenton from Solid Waste Management. Uh just talk to you about the newly combined department that's going to be named the Environmental and Street Services Department.

Which button? Nope. There we go. All right.

So the department of public works, solid waste management, and a portion of neighborhood improvement services, specifically the impact team are all being merged together to improve operational efficiencies between departments that are really front-facing to the public. Uh we provide a lot of similar services on the front line portion of the departments between solid waste management with residential collection, bulky collections. Uh the impact team within NIS also does a lot of bulky collections as well for illegal dumps. And then we have the traditional public

works services with street maintenance, storm water maintenance, uh street cleaning which again does deals with a lot of trash issues around the city. Um, but also by combining these departments and division together, it allows more career growth opportunities for the staff and those front-facing positions because right now, the way we're currently structured, they're somewhat limited between in the departments unless they move between departments multiple times to try and move up their career. This will give staff in those in those work groups the opportunity to actually move up within one department if they choose to do so. And the merger also allows us to share a lot of resources that we have specifically equipment where we locate the staff kind of moving towards housing them together in one two centralized locations.

So we have some opportunities for improvements there. So this is the new org chart that's proposed for the department public works. A large portion moved out of public works. development review

portion, moved over to the new planning and development department that you just heard from Sarah Young about, but now we're moving in solid waste management and neighborhood improved services, specifically the impact team again, into this joint department with a new FTE count of 307. I believe there are two new positions that are proposed. One was specifically within solid waste and one was within storm water services. I think it's a little hard to see the other one because the text box is blocking it there. So preliminary budget just like planning and development we are heavy on the personnel side overall budget will be 57 plus million 35 million in personnel 22 in operating uh public works well what was public works will still keep a large portion of the capital program that we have uh you'll see that in one of the performance measures that I have here related to streets but this just gives you an overview of the breakout by the

different funds that'll that'll cover the environmental and street services department. So, one thing that you all have heard from from me on a routine basis is street maintenance, street needs. Uh, that's a neverending request that will come from this department and any department that's responsible for street maintenance. Right now, we are currently in the process of updating our pavement condition index study uh to give us another snapshot of where we stand overall with the street network. Uh as you can see here, we've pretty much stayed in that mid60 range for our overall PCI residential roadways, which the majority of the city's street network are residential streets. Uh we think that we'll still be in that mid60 range when we get the updated PCI study, which we expect to have the results back sometime later this year into the winter and we'll be able to share that information out with council at that

time. But even with having bond money available to us, that'll be a request after we complete all the bond spending to have additional funds come towards street maintenance. Because if you for those of you that were on council remember from the last study that what we anticipated needing on an annual basis was roughly I'm sorry if you just pause real quick. I'm going to try and get rid of these captions here.

Okay. Council can actually see the numbers. Real quick. Uh would they um would the if you remove the box, is that going to prevent folks online from seeing it?

Uh if because we have presentations on our laptops as well. Oh, can you see it? Yeah, we have we have our own copies. Okay.

Okay. So, I was actually going to kind of run a live test, but if you guys got a caption. Yeah, we we we're following along. Okay, great.

Great. Great. Great. Sorry about that. Well, I

cannot go back. Uh oh. You should be able to just use the arrow keys. It's not working.

There we go. There you go. Yep. So, uh, as I was saying with the, um, bond spending.

We currently have one project out the door using bond funds. We expect to use those funds over the next two to three years, but that need will still be there even if the bonds monies are expended. Roughly $25 million a year just to maintain that current level of PCI in the mid60s. If we wanted to improve streets beyond the mid60s, that would require an investment.

My assumption right now would be in that 30 to $35 million range on an annual basis. Um, and that's just one portion of the street network. We're also working on a bridge asset management program because the city does

have brid bridge infrastructure that we're responsible for. Um sidewalks that's not on here, but it's another piece of infrastructure that we're still going to be responsible for. So all of those are big dollar items that require consistent annual investments. Uh but this is just the one that you hear most about from residents because of the condition of streets when they complain about potholes, pavement failures, different things like that.

So, just wanted to give you an idea of where we currently are with the PCI network on the residential roadways. And next, we're transitioning over to the solid waste side of streets environmental services. And I'll turn this over to Wayne Fenton. Since you're here, can I ask you a question on the previous slide? Um, can you can you just talk about like what in in real life terms if I'm walking down the street what it looks like PCI? Can you just talk to me about what that is in in lay person terms?

Sure. So, it's it's almost like a great a school scale. This 9200 is an A, 80s B, 70s C60s D. So when you start seeing streets in the 60s, you're seeing streets with cracking with some potholes.

You may have an occasional pavement failure, but it's still usable for the traveling public. Um, when you get to a C range, you're seeing less of the cracking, less of the potholes, less of those stressors in the pavement. When you get to a B- range, you're in pretty good condition. Probably no potholes.

You're just seeing some stress in the asphalt itself, but no failures. A, it's like the street was just paved. When you get down below 60, that's where, and we have do have some streets that are in that complete failure mode where you're in the 50s and lower. That's when the street has is riddled with potholes.

You have stress fractures throughout the street. Um, it's tripping hazards if pedestrians walk across the street. Uh,

definite hazards for motorists using the streets. So, it's kind of think of it that way. the the better the condition. A 90 to 100 is pretty much a brand new street.

And as you start seeing different things come up with the street as far as stresses, that's where the the grade drops. Okay. So, not trying to be critical, but just so I understand this graph. Yeah.

We're saying that there are 35% of our streets are below a score of 65. like they're below a D. Below C above or Yeah, D. I'm sorry.

Okay. Um, and then 65% of our streets are above a D, but do we have a breakdown of like are they all at 65 by 8% or No. So, this is just like I said the average once we get the new we have the old study which gives you a breakdown of the miles of streets that fall into each range and that's what we're updating. So once we have that update, you'll be able to see the road network. What percentage of streets fall

into that A category? What percentage of streets fall into that B category? The majority are going to fall in that C and D category. And then we quite honestly have some streets in that F category.

And those are citymaintained streets. We do not take into account the NC DOT maintained roadways or the private streets. If I can add just for context for council member Cook. So the the PCI is something that we have brought back to council um every few years to seek policy direction from the council about kind of what target they wanted to hit.

Uh and and so there's been some extensive presentations to prior councils showing uh actual visual examples of what different levels of PCI accomplish. Uh and actually the the targets that we use were actually set by council. uh we we sort of gave kind of option A, option B, option C with various cost commitments um uh connected to those and so the the targets are not

internally driven. Those uh that that we have are are reflection of that council direction. That's a process we can always repeat for for the existing council. I know several of the members on this board uh have been around long enough to see a few of those presentations.

Uh but obviously this is something that is directly related to funding. Obviously the more funding we invest in roads, the higher scores we end up with and and uh this this is a reflection of our current policy direction. Also the higher the level, the less the maintenance costs. Um I think that was the main push.

It is you know um for us to move to the 20 million in the in the funding for this area. just making sure that we weren't dropping below that 60 because then it becomes more expensive to try and address it. I I did want to um ask and we're not sharing any numbers um around I guess it probably would be helpful to have numbers around how many residents are submitting those types of complaints around potholes and um

pavement failures and then also like how many reimbursements we're actually doing. I know there's been a whole lot of emails and texts from me um around when the city actually does cover a flat tire because they've you know destroyed the the rim or whatever in a pothole or what have what have you and trying to make sure that people understand that if it's not reported the city's not responsible and trying to make sure that more people report it. I just want to know if there's been an increase or not. So with regards to the number of service requests we get for potholes, we could get that information through one call.

As far as claims, Tim Flora with finance risk management normally handles the claims process. So I'm pretty sure that's data they have available that we could share with you all. Thanks Mr. Williams for just even this slide right here and thanks to Bo also for just sort of like the clarification. I think it's important to recognize that we're sort of like this is a policy choice, right? We could get higher quality, but it comes at a cost, right?

So, appropriate that um clarity. I guess my question is simply um do other peer communities like Raleigh, uh Greensboro, Winston Salem, do they do a similar PCI measurement or is that sort of like is that unique to Durham? And what's the sort of methodology? Is that something that's standard across cities or it's it's it's a it's the most common data set that's used to measure the condition of your pavement.

There's also a I think a PCR, pavement condition rating. It's pretty much similar the same thing, just different terminology. Um Raleigh, Greensboro, other cities do do similar studies like this. I'm not sure of the intervals that they do it at.

Uh but also their street network is slightly different in some ways. Uh because in some cases, some cities, I'll use Charlotte for example, they do a lot more maintenance on the state roadways within the city limits. So I'm pretty sure they gather more data regarding state roadways just because they perform that maintenance. So it may skew what

their overall PCI rating is. Um but yeah, it it's pretty like a similar Yeah. Yes. Correct.

So I'm curious also for these peer cities like what they set their benchmark at. What what do we know? for example, like a Raleigh or a Charlotte or Greensboro Winston like do they set it at like 75 or I think that varies by the city council in each city because it really is a policy direction and how much money the city wants to invest in their street network. we we can work to gather that data if that's something that I'm just cur I'm mostly just curious but I was clear it's a ultimately it's a policy decision we have to make right so yeah but it might I mean actually it might be helpful just to know in a couple cities like what are they what's the target they set would love to so as we bring back the updated PCI data we can include that as part of our update that will bring the council over the winter just as as reference it be helpful to know yeah correct we could do that thank Uh yeah, I think it'll be very helpful information uh very helpful uh to to know that as well. I I just also want to

just throw out there, you know, this is this is city functions, you know, and and again, as I said yesterday, you know, city government is a balanced jigsaw puzzle. It's not a product that we're selling. So um I I think it'll be helpful just to have for context around the state you know what some of our pure cities are doing but also if we take that information we should take the decisions that their city council make as well um big ideas are expensive and then you have your necessary things that you have to do as well and we have very limited ways of generating revenue so we can't cut our hand off and then expect to grab something. So, more information the better, but I think it'll help with context and help inform the types of decisions that we'll have to make uh when we're thinking about how we are expanding the tax base and generating revenue.

Okay. Yes. Go ahead. Um I hate to ask this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Um I know that

the cost of maintenance on streets has just been increasing steadily. Can you tell us like a ballpark of where we're at these days? You have a ballpark of where we're at on a per lane mile for maintenance. Yeah.

Or repaving Blackburn um project design and delivery group. Um so this year with our repaving, we actually got a lower cost than we did like several years ago because the amount of funding that y'all provided us. you know, we we led a $16 million paving contract. So, that got us down to $24 a square yard, which we haven't seen that price in a couple years. So, um you know, as far as that, because of the funding increase, we're a able to do a better job of of meeting getting those prices lower. Uh they're going up a little bit every year, but

it's not like it was when COVID hit and everything jumped. Um things are starting to steady out a little bit. So it's not quite as as you know shocking. Um we are still seeing rise but it's it's starting to level out.

What's the cost of lane mileis? Cost of lane mile. Like I said I can do it by square yard was $24. I left my phone.

We we can follow up. It's it's just to get a concept because it's it's when I talk to constituents about this. I think this is like the number one thing that is useful for people to know is like people are like why have you not fixed this thing and it's helpful to be like this is exactly how much this thing would cost and it's going up you so it's just it's helpful for me to contextualize the spending. Um, also when you say that it was cheaper, it was because you were do you were able to do in bulk, right? And and it would be also helpful to know like sort of where a threshold is for that like where the costs really start to decrease like how much we would need

to expend before we see like a we're at our max right now. Okay. We couldn't go more. Um, in fact, uh, our contractors were squirming this year trying to we had to give we had to extend the contract eight instead of a 12-month contract is 18-month contract because they don't have the ability to do that amount of work in a year.

They said moving forward once they see a steady amount of work, they can start meeting that need into a 12-month period of time. But we're at our maximum amount that we that with our staff and the contractors we have in this area and how much work is in this area. We're at our max. So we we uh please don't give us any more to do.

Okay. I'm not going to say that, but um we're we're there. We're where we need to be. Let's just say that.

Thanks. I just wanted to add when you're giving that um here city um feedback if you could just make sure by lane mile or per lane mile. Yeah, we'll have it by lane mile. It's easier to

conceptualize hearing it that way. Yeah, but also just not just acknowledging that our peer cities may not have as many state roads or like correct there's a whole lot of variations and this city is very unique in where where it sits and how it sits. So yeah, I think um at last check we were like 110 squared like all of that. So yeah, me thanks.

Yeah, I think it the pure city information is helpful. Um I I I was part of those councils who kind of set the policy back in the day. A couple of us were there and you know I think what's really helpful is think about your own house. I mean there are some things in your house.

You may have a repair list of things in your house. Um it's still habitable. You can still sleep in it, but there there might be a door that caks or or but you can still live in the house. And some things you prioritize as to what you're going to do based upon your income and and what you can afford at that time. I remember the first time I made the mistake of telling my mama what another kid was doing in their house. Uh and my mom was you don't

live there. Don't don't be bring their house to our house. And some of those cities don't put money into eviction diversion. some of those cities don't want to uh subsidize affordable housing to the degree that we're doing.

And all of that paints the picture of of where, you know, how they spend the money or or what they want their road conditions uh uh to look like. Um there's an interesting historical caveat to this as well. Some of these roads were in such bad condition because of historical disinvestment. So there was an equity lens that we brought.

Some of the decisions we've made with respect to roads and sidewalks in Durm have been directly tied to realizing that historically it was governments that neglect and disinvestment that put some of these neighborhoods and roads in those conditions. So, we've shifted uh some funds there. So there there's there's a nexus and a pretty big context in which uh this is done. But a raw number from a a um a pure city as a

conversation partner without knowing what else is going on in their house. Um they may prioritize some things differently. They may have more money than us. They may decide they want to spend $50 million uh on their roads, but we want to spend 25 so we can have 25 to do name whatever it is.

uh immigrant defense uh uh whatever it may be. So, it's helpful, but it was a policy decision made internally for Durham by Duramites looking at Durham's values and considering the creeks that were in our house and what our condition of our steps were, what was in our refrigerator and what was in our medicine uh chest as our house here. So, I think that's just uh you know, useful um to keep in mind. Um I'm, you know, I haven't made a claim to the city, but I I've had a rim torn up. Uh I, you know, driving around, uh Durham before, so I I get it. Um you know, um I'm not going to be making a claim, by the way, but but I have had a rim uh torn up in the city,

but yeah, but I think it's important to keep in mind that this decision was made in the context of a whole bunch of decisions. The more money you have, the more stuff you can address at one time. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Appreciate that. Um, and I'd look forward to the information that we get whenever we address this again.

It's always a sobering number every time. Um, very sobering that and the sidewalks. Um, yeah, it's a it's a little bit. Yeah.

So, I appreciate this. I I am interested to see what other other communities are doing, even if it's to then also tell It's always important to tell the story of of to the mayor prom's point. We we make decisions based on all kinds of information that we hear and and the more information we have, I think the better informed we can make those decisions. Um, and I do want to say that I'm glad to hear that we are at capacity as far as what we can handle. But this is historic money that we're talking about. So, at a certain point,

it does become can we get those can we get everything up so that the m it overall becomes cheaper long term because it's cheaper to maintain than it is to build your foundation every single time. Um, and and we all have those deeply expensive house expenses. Uh, that is HVAC or foundation and it's it's a core function of that house. And so, you have to you have to you got to figure out how you pay for it.

And I do want to thank uh voters for saying yes because they put uh a lot of they they took out a second mortgage and now we're uh and now we're going to be able to do Yeah, that's what they did. Um and so now we're going to be able to put some some real money. Um and I also want to appreciate uh I think the mayor pro Tim has asked for I think the entire time we've been on council together about that fund balance uh to to streets and just to see it in the CIP this year. I know our fund balance is not as at at the historic highs that we've seen in previous years, but I think it is also from a financial standpoint the the

right move as well. Thank you. Thank you. We still have several more slides to go.

And I wish we didn't. So, at this point, I will turn it over to Wayne Fenton. Is that good placement? Can you hear me?

All right. Yeah. All right. Well, good morning all.

Uh yes, Wayne Fenton with Solid Waste. Uh happy to be with you this morning. Um I'm going to continue uh in Marvin's footsteps here and present challenges uh that we are facing in solid waste. uh maybe not all of them but several of them anyway. Um the first one here again some of these you've seen before and heard us speak about uh our recycling uh contamination rate. Uh these are presented again through the strategic plan under the thriving envir vibrant

environment uh goal and uh that has become a major challenge for us. Uh I know one of the questions may be well why did we see such a uh a significant jump and it's really not uh we don't believe due to a sudden surge in contamination. It is more uh that our previous contractor processed materials in a different way than the contractor that we currently have. Um essentially what they were doing is all the material that came into their facility got sorted.

it was allocated on a percentage basis by weight and so that included the contamination. Uh with the current contractor, they're more focused on the individual loads that are coming in and they do analysis on those and uh and then uh portion it that way. I did want to point out again contamination rate includes two things. Uh it is materials that should never be in the recycling stream. So, incorrect types of plastics,

you know, plastic bags, uh, porcelain, uh, window glass, Pyrex, all kinds of things that people think are right. Um, we've talked before, I think, about wish cycling. People feel bad about throwing away certain things, so they'll place it in the recycling stream with the idea of, well, they'll figure this out, and if it's not the right thing, they'll just process it out. Uh, and unfortunately, that's not not realistic.

The other thing though uh we also have is correct items that are improperly prepared and most of that is bagged recyclables. So people will maybe collect in their kitchen or in their garage. It's easy to put, you know, soda cans or or water bottles, whatever into a bag and then you toss that into your cart. And uh we're working diligently to get people to if they use a bag like that, tear it open, dump it into your cart.

Uh but do not leave it begged. So uh those are really the things we're focusing on. I hope everyone here is

familiar with our recycle right Durham campaign. Um if not that means we're not doing our job well enough. We're going to continue to promote that message. And one of the other things we like catchy acronyms.

We have one now feet on the street. and we're working with some of our staff to get out in the field and they are literally lifting the lid on recycling carts and looking for uh evidence of contamination. Uh it is a friendly reminder. It's not a we're, you know, coming down hard on people.

It's to get that message out and just let them know either there were items again that shouldn't have been there or they were improperly prepared. So, um we're going to continue with that campaign. Uh we're uh putting stickers on top of the lids while they're out doing that to uh again make sure people are able to easily find out oh you know what can and can't go in and we're hoping that will help uh help drive this down. But uh anyway that is the the primary reason

for for this one. Oh, sorry. I have a question question about that because we so council Middleton and I went on a a field trip to the transfer station but also the material recover recovery facility. Yes.

Really informative and I should start by saying like the more education the better certainly is something we've got to do but I'm just curious where that number comes from because we had a big discussion with in the this contractor is this is a recycle America waste management. Yeah, that was the site we went to. Yeah. So yeah, I would love your thoughts on that because as we were talking about this rate, we were like, "Well, how do you guys know? " They're like, "Well, we know cuz the truck comes in and dumps stuff on the floor and we can sort of we can do it. " So I like I do wonder where they get that number from and whether that's sort of a general guess or whether it's really a

quantitative measure. because and I know there's cost implications there. would love your thoughts on that because as we looked at that we're like man this is kind of it seemed fuzzy to us right well um so what they do and again we're I will say we're not there we don't have people there every day monitoring their activities but uh the process that they typically use and they do this you know across North America it's not just just here uh because they're a major corporation but they will take a sample from a load that does come in they don't take even the whole load they'll scoop up a couple of lo buck ETS's full. They will take it aside and then they sort through it.

The uh percentages that they get from that they then will apply to all of our material. Now is that fair or reasonable? Um I don't know. It's it's difficult to imagine how you know they can't literally pull all of ours aside and then carries aside and and all the individual communities and process it

separately. So that that is the method that they use. Um as I mentioned our previous contractor they would just sort all the material and then if by weight let's say 30% that came to their facility was from Durham well then 30% of the glass 30% of the aluminum 30% of the steel 30% of the contaminants would be allocated to Durham. So it's a different confident because he was actually going to ask this question of them.

We feel confident that they are doing it by hand. They're taking they are not sending it through their machinery. They're taking some amount by hand and they're looking through it by hand with all nine employees that work there. I mean there's like nobody that works there is very very small staff.

Right. But that's what that is what we have confirmed that that's what they're doing. It it is a hand sort. Yes.

Exactly. Right. And that is and that's also like that's also um um not contingent but it sort of like depends on like what route that was from

right what that what route that truck was on you know so highly sensitive to those kind of details and if they're doing like whatever once a week one load highly sensitive to what route that was on it is and we do work with them to try and share information on which routes we think are going to be more or less representative and so that to your point they don't sort of get it all from a, you know, a brand new development or all of it from, you know, older part of the city, that type of thing. But to get samples across the uh there is no perfect system that I'm aware of for getting, you know, exact uh exactly right percentages. The big thing that we really are focusing on is we need to drive it down. We know that um just again even with the feet on the street you know literally when you look in a cart you are uh observing not not obviously at every household but you are seeing uh locations where people don't have it quite right. So that that is our

goal to make sure people have the information. Getting everybody to do the right thing can can be challenging. You know tear those plastic bags or whatever. But if people are are just not aware or again doing the wish cycling um we really need to and want to try and uh you know break that habit.

Can I ask um how long this contract is and when the next um Chelsea Cook if she remembers 2028? Yes. Okay. Um, I mean, I just have I mean, this is just a question now.

I mean, our our recycling bin in that break room has a plastic bag in it. There's a plastic bag in every single one of our recycling bins through city hall. So, like yesterday in this room alone, I went and that that recycling bin was contaminated after lunch, right? So, like we're all guilty of doing this, right? So, I think that I'm not shocked that this is our

contamination rate at all because if folks in city hall, who are supposed to be the the folks the most plugged in, city workers and and city council members, and we can't sort our own recycling after a lunch, then God help the rest of the city. That's all I have to say. Um uh I mean, and I do this. I mean, everybody knows this.

We are like my husband is like trash king, right? Like we produce a tiny bag of garbage a week. It is where he is probably the most obsessed. Um, I can tell you what is compostable.

He does. No, you're not. He He can tell you what's compostable, what can be recycled, what cannot. The man did an entire roof in those milk carton shingles just to see how long they would last in college as a test.

Okay? Like he is deep in and you Yes, they do work as roof shingles. Um, so I just want to share that like you can get your waist down. It just means intentionality and I know that a lot of it is our system

structurally and we are wasteful as a culture but a lot of it is on the user side too. It is a both and. And so many years ago in elementary schools there was a program where we use compostable trays and we had those kindergarters and third graders down to a science what they knew and they knew it at six and seven years old. They knew what was compostable, what was recyclable and what had to go in the wastefill.

So if they can figure it out, you can figure it out at your house and you're going to save a lot of money uh for the city. So whatever we have to do on the education side, Yes. And also we we have to think about um you know just in general lowering our consuming like just we have to be less trash infused as as as um consumers. But thank you.

I'm done. Well, you didn't ask me to be philosophical, but I will add one point. I think one of the things we're really working against also is that a lot of manufacturers want to have people think their product is recyclable or compostable uh even though it is not. In a lot of

cases it's you know recyclable and then in fine print where facilities exist and there are not a lot of processing facilities such as the one you visited um that accept these harder to recycle materials. But everybody wants to be seen as being greener and and having the recyclable or compostable product. So, we're working against that, too. And I do want to comment, I mean, we take shoes, we take clothes, we take a lot of things we didn't used to.

We take electronics. You just have to know where to go. And those were decisions that we made along the way that folks really need to understand of where you need to take your stuff and what the city actually takes. So, I do want to commend staff and decisions that have been made um to what we accept and what we don't over the years.

Yeah. tires, everything like it is all Yeah. And then also to Mayor Proin's point, the fleshable as well, not just like it's all in there. Thank you, Council Member Baker. Thank you for um Thank you for being here. Um first, I just wanted

to get a little more background on what what are the different um methods of of outreach for the um recycle right and Durham campaign? um you know, social media postings, whatever. Um two, if I am standing at a recycling bin and I'm holding a container, what's the best way for me to figure out whether I can put that in or not? And then three, bless you.

Three, um stepping back a little bit and thinking a little bit bigger. um the philosophical uh conversation. You know, I know that there's a lot of work in in other places and other parts of the world even and and in Durham as well about more durable containers, using those, trying to build that in and then washing them and reusing them. I don't know how that's going, but is that something um that that you've seen is working well, and is that something that we're exploring here as a city? And I we've been approached by folks who are who are interested in that as well. we

got approached by folks last year. So, um those are my three questions to you. Okay. Well, let me start with the last one and work back.

Um as far as uh reusables and washables and so on, um you're right, there are other communities that are doing this. Um there are companies that have grown up around it, especially with drink cups and so on that are being reused in stadiums and and and that type of thing. Um on the local level, uh we had had conversations with uh some of the nonprofits here that were interested in uh potentially doing something. Um but they have not really been able to move forward with it.

Um I think they had some changes in staffing and and so on and that maybe impacted their ability. Uh we did envision trying to work this into the reuse hub project that we have discussed before and in fact uh Marvin had mentioned one of the new positions is within solid waste. Um that is a sustainability position that will be focused on reuse. Uh we had a uh a fuse

fellow you may have met before uh Katie Hunt and she was uh doing that work for us but that again was more planning supporting of community groups that type of thing because we we do not obviously have a facility to uh to manage these things. Uh we have uh a CIP proposal that was uh in place before actually to construct our own processing facility for recyclables but that was initiated when there was only one processor here. uh there was no competition and so what we are looking at proposing is transitioning that to a reuse hub facility um that could work with nonprofits uh to pull out materials to do you know there may be an opportunity for a wash facility um I think some of you all have heard us talk about this before but also job training um you know uh folks uh for re-entry programs and so on solid waste

has had some good success with those in the past So, um that is something that we're working to develop and with this position uh will put us in a much uh better place to be able to uh develop that. We did apply for just to converse the idea of the the reuse facility is still sort of like a vision could be coming to us in a future CIP request. Yes. And then the I was just going to mention too, we do have uh I'm not going to count on this one, but we have an EPA grant request that is still sitting.

Um I'm not sure where to think that will go, but we're hopeful we could still be considered for funding for that. Um and that would really provide the funds that were uh rather than needing CIP funds, it could use those grant monies. So uh I think the last I checked it's summer that they're saying for decisions on uh how the awards will be made. So we'll obviously keep you all posted if we hear anything positive or negative. Um, you had asked how do you know what should go in a container and what should not. Um, we have everything is on our

website as far as what goes in the uh blue cart. Um, again, we're getting uh decals put ones that don't have them already. Uh, technology has moved on and we're now able to order carts that have a uh full color imprint right on the lid. So they'll they'll arrive to us that way with our materials acceptable.

Um we just tell everybody go refer to that. If it's not on there, then we can't accept it because our processor can't accept it. Um for things that might seem a little harder to figure out. Uh we also recommend the website.

We have the waste wizard. Uh or you can do it on your phone, your mobile device. We've got the app and you can type in just about anything and it's going to, you know, light bulbs or again, you know, green plastic cups or whatever it might be. It will very likely bring it up for you. Textiles we talked about and and household hazardous waste. Um, it will point you to the right thing to do

with it. Uh, can be a drop off uh that the city has. It will tell you there's nonprofits and and give you some indication of you know habitat restore for example to take building materials all those types of things. Uh it's a great tool and uh we get a lot of feedback from folks who do use it.

We just wish everybody would so that if there's any uncertainty um and and that's the old acronym if in doubt leave it out. Um, I'll say quickly, plastics, I think, are the one that create the most challenge for folks because it's, oh, well, there's numbers 1 through 7 and which numbers do we take? And again, we ask people, don't pay attention to the numbers. Pay attention to what our website says, which is, for example, plastic bottles and jars or jugs.

That's that's really all we can accept. Um, same thing with glass bottles and jars. We can't take window glass. We can't take Pyrex.

That type thing. But if you use that tool, it's going to set you on the right right path. And I'm sorry, your first question was

right. Um I think that was it, right? Yeah, that was it. Okay.

Yeah, I think you had a question about ways of outreach, strategies of outreach campaign, the way for people. So, um just a a quick overview. We have um uh systems on our trucks now that allow our drivers to identify um if a cart can't be collected, it's blocked by a parked vehicle, it's sitting beside the house, it has contamination, visible contamination, that type of thing. So, uh the technology allows them to identify this.

our Durham one call folks have access and our customer service folks have access to pull up that information. And so in the past we pretty much had to air on the side of the customer, oh we missed you. So they we would create routes. They would go back and pick up carts that um were reported as missed. We now have the ability to communicate to residents and again in a friendly and polite manner, let them know why we were unable to uh

to collect it. They can even include a photo right from the route. Um and that has helped drive down the number of reported miscolctions that we have had. Uh because most people when you communicate with them, oh okay, right well I'll I'll put it out next time.

That has freed up some of the staff time for our in-house customer service reps and we are now working with them. Uh we thought it was a good fit because they were used to communicating with the public albeit in a different way um on these service request tickets. Um but we are now working with them to get them trained up and they are they've had a lot of different events uh schools community groups um you know some of the events the festivals and and so on that we have um I'm going to look to Chelsea Cook again what am I missing what am I missing um for uh the outreach folks that have attended these different events anything

Hello, good morning. Chelsea Cook Harris, assistant director, solid waste management. Um, in terms of education and outreach, it really started out with some commercials. I think Leonardo Williams participated with some of those with North Carolina Central on Spectrum.

So, we still have those. Um, but right now it's more of a grassroots effort, right? So, it's really been us going out into the community, participating in these events, the Feed on the Street, um, working with Durham Public Schools. We partnered with Durham County Library.

So, those are the kind of efforts that we're really focused on right now is really interacting with folks and having that connection with them to let us ask the questions that you're asking essentially like does this go into the green cart. Is this compostable? And we just did a workshop actually a few weeks ago out at our site for composting, backyard composting. Sold some more composting um backyard composters there.

So, it's really a matter of us being more intentional with our efforts going forward. We do have the commercials, but it's really about being able to have that one-on-one contact with individuals and educate them in that way. Um, and we're going to continue to do some of that. You all met Superan. He's very

popular or they are very popular in the community. Um, and to your point about the schools, we found that to be a really good effort for us to move into the schools, working with Durham public schools. We've been at Hope Valley. We've been at Spring Valley, WG Pearson, and just really there at after school programs.

So, other opportunities to get in front of the kids because like you said, I know my own kids kind of whipped me into shape many, many years ago when it came to recycling. So, they learn it at school and they come home and so a lot of schools have gardens and we are talking to them about composting. Um, we have composters at Perkins Orchard. That's one of our partners in the community because lots of folks shop there.

So if they hear about composting, they know how to compost or they can bring back their fruits and vegetables if they go bad and they can compost them for them. So that's kind of the efforts that we're working towards right now. And it's it's been a long time coming, but it's going to take a while for us to drive this contamination rate down. Um but we're hopeful that these efforts will work. And as far as the city facilities recycling goes, we just launched the recycling champions throughout the city. We're asking um departments to volunteer folks to be on

that group with us because to your point, it's very inconsistent. Um it's very inaccurate in some areas in terms of how you recycle. So we did receive a grant from DEEQ for $30,000 that's going to allow us to roll out a program across the city that's more consistent. So that was no confusion about what you do at one facility versus what you do at another facility.

Hopefully that answers your questions. Yeah. No, that's great. That's great.

Yeah. people who don't care just throw everything away. And really, people who recycle want to be recycling well and don't know how. And so, whatever we can do to to help with the outreach, um I I think that's that's so important.

People just they want to know and and it's hard for them to know. And I just I just downloaded the waste wizard. That's um a great resource um that I think a lot of people probably don't know about unless you I mean, you do a little Googling, you can find it. But I that's a great resource. Um, and just coming back to the reuse facility, do we think that that could be impactful? Could that make a dent or is that something that is just kind of

shiny? Is it something that we'd have to invest in and expect payoffs 10 20 years down the down the line? Um, what what what are we thinking about the reuse and and wash facility and and that kind of major it's a major investment. It would be a completely different direction.

Do we think that it would pay off or are we still trying to see what other communities are doing, what the impacts are in other communities before we make an investment like that? Uh, well, great question. Um, the main thing I would say with the reuse facility is that it would focus on materials that are not being collected at curbside. So, these are, you know, we've talked before about textiles, for example.

One of the other big ones that a lot of communities are are dealing with right now are mattresses. Um they're big, they're bulky, they're heavy. Uh they fill up landfills and uh they can be uh dismantled and recycled. Um there's steel springs, you know, coils, there's wood frames, um there's fabric that can

be recycled just like we do with the uh with the textiles. Um the the wash facility would be another opportunity. What we will be looking at and part of what um again we had already done some community outreach was to find out what the community thought would be beneficial to have what um what type of businesses or opportunities because we don't necessarily see this as being something that's just staffed by the city. It would be we're envisioning um almost like a storefront operation.

you know, we would work with uh nonprofits. Some of them may be or even a a for-profit, a startup. They may be able to pay to lease some of the space, get them started as an incubator, and then they can grow that um that project. Um so, it would be non curbside materials. As I said, we are aware of what other communities do. Building materials is another one um you know, that is very commonly uh pulled out of the waist

stream. Thank you so much. Yeah. I I'm one of the few people who knows Stoan's true identity.

His or her enemies are everywhere. Absolutely. I want to uh I want to just use my platform and go ahead and help uh right now. Um I want to address an elephant in the room.

I um I I don't speak about it much, but I identify as African-American. Uh, and there there are thousands of there are thousands of members in our community right now who have a um a bunch of plastic bags either uh in their cupboard or under the Yeah. Uh we don't throw those away. Um we it's part of part of our you know our tradition of you having to use everything.

It's part of our genius and recycling everything. So I just want to speak to that those members of the community. Um just go ahead and put it out there. Um, we can't put those in the recycling bin anymore. So, I know we use them for other things and they hold a

lot of stuff, but when we we just got to do our part, brothers and sisters, that when we come out to the recycling bin, pour the stuff out of it and then take the bag back. I just want I know it's an elephant in the room and some of y'all are thinking it, but but we know we have thousands of these bags in our homes and and they serve purposes. They're not wasteful. We use them for all kinds of stuff.

They were many of us use them as book bags even now. So, let's let's do our part and go ahead and and not put those in the recycling bin. So, you don't have to say it, I'll say it, right? All right.

So, we appreciate the support and to your point, if you dump it out, you can use it again to put more recyclables in. So, close the loop. So, um Okay. Get the right direction on these arrows.

All right. So, uh this I'm sorry. Oh, uh, so this next slide actually kind of I guess highlights maybe what we were talking about our waste diversion rate

and we're pretty flatline on that and the big reason is uh the way this is measured it is all of the materials that we collect trash recycling yard waste bulky uh items and yard waste and then what percentage of that is able to be recycled And right now, as we said, the focus is pretty much on curbside materials. So, uh, we want to obviously drive that up in terms of diversion. Uh, one of the things that I think everybody here is familiar with that we've, uh, done some work on is food scraps. And uh I appreciate Chelsea Cook pointing out uh you know the initiative on composting because one of the things I already or want to remind folks is we're already collecting food scraps from just about everybody but it's in their trash cart. And so if we can get those out, they don't have to go to a MURF. They can be composted by our contractor who does the work right on our site on our property.

um they retain ownership of the material, but it is a high quality product and it costs us less to have it composted than to put in landfill. What I think we've shared before though also is however we have to collect it and we have to collect it separately. So that requires additional resources and we'll kind of lead into my uh next item here. I don't know if there's any questions on the diversion rate, but if not, I'll just go over.

Um, so we are looking at opportunities to uh reduce our operating costs, save money, uh, and potentially be able to do more diversion uh with uh without having to seek too many new resources at least. And so we have some uh potential fee changes that includes common things such as our tipping fee. Um, a lot of the contractors, most of the contractors these days, uh, have a built-in CPI. So, we know each year that there's going to

be a cost increase. We just, we don't know until the CPI is published what that what that amount is going to be. Um, for the material that goes to the landfill, there's also a fuel search charge, and we spoke about that at the retreat, the fact that that used to get us a rebate, but now is actually money going out. So that's uh a big hit that we took there.

Um we also have some potential service delivery modifications and then as we said identifying opportunities for efficiency. So let me just jump into this one. So our first proposed service delivery change is that we transition yards collection from a weekly service to a bi-weekly service. um it is something we would have to implement a price increase if we do not do this and it also does not give us the opportunity to then use some of those resources for other things and to really streamline the collection process. Um our estimated savings if we do this

would be about 530,000. um we believe and we know certainly from experience that there's lots of folks who don't put their card out every week anyway and uh or if they do it's habit. They don't necessarily need to I'm paying for this so I'll just put it out even if there's only a little bit in the bottom of it. We also certainly know there are times of the year and depending on the property, the number of trees uh you know leafy trees and so on where people do have it out and it's full pretty much every week.

Um what we're reminding folks is that they still have the opportunity to put out uh up to 10 biodegradable bags. Um if they continue to with the service they get the two uh bulky brush collections every year. Um so we think it can still be a very good service a very good product but if we can make this change um it then frees up funds to do uh to do other things. The other thing by doing this is we then are proposing to um with the uh

bi-weekly service we're able to u make it a Monday through Thursday collection rather than currently Tuesday through Friday which was done I think in large part to avoid having so many carts at the curb all at the same time. And uh what what this will allow us to do is by going to Monday to Thursday, if we have a holiday, we do our collections on Fridays makeup day. Now with Tuesday through Friday, the collection gets pushed to the following Monday, which then uh typically results in overtime for that that next week. Uh so we see this as a real benefit.

Um and it it's part of our uh our budget proposal here. Okay, the other one uh slightly different but our bulky collections. Uh we talked earlier about our use of technology. This is another one that uh that has really helped us out on. Uh you can now go online. You can use the app

um that was recently downloaded in this room. In fact, uh we hope more people listening are doing the same. Um but if you want to request a bulky pickup, you're able to do it online. you can call into Durham one call or our folks and we'll still help uh get it set up, but it is scheduled now.

And so uh we work with customers to find out what day of the week if they have a preference. If there's time slots because we only make a certain number available each day um to avoid getting into, you know, really unbalanced loads and that type of thing, uh then we'll go ahead and schedule them. With this one, we're saying we would simply discontinue doing holiday makeup days. So that time when there is a a holiday and the Friday what would normally be collected on Friday rolls to Monday, we would just discontinue that.

Um it would be 12 to 13 less collection days each year. Uh which we don't think should be a hardship because there's still lots of available days and time slots to be able to book those uh collections. So, those

are two of the key uh things we're looking at for um Oh, well, I'm getting ahead here. Those are two of the key things we're looking at to uh reduce our costs and be more efficient and potentially have resources for uh some of the other things that we have discussed. So, happy to answer other questions or turn it back to Marvin. Thank you.

Uh, I just want to say I I did enjoy being a part of the um recycling commercials. They were fun. Um, but I also remember when my son uh gave me that look when he was in fifth grade about running the water while brushing my teeth. Um, and I I was embarrassed.

I do not run the water now. So, I think the way forward is through our children. uh which means the way forward for our communication might be back through the schools again and let our kids be our teachers. Um that I mean it just really empowers them. That was a

very effective we had deer to keep kids off drugs was very effective and water conservation which was very effective. So we we might need to partner with our schools again to try that all over again. Um uh yeah just any any other additional comments? Yeah, I just want to add um my voice in saying that I think a re a reuse um rewash or reuse wash facility would be of benefit.

I don't I know that that's why I asked about so by 2028, you know, that's a three-year time frame. It gives you enough time to start building some capital improvement plan funding for it. And so if I think it would be a a great way to move forward um knowing that these uses aren't going away and recycling is going to be with us, the cost is going to continue to go up. Um I have a little bit of uh intimate knowledge um on what's been going on and just household hazardous waste. I think

we know that not only our city but other towns around us will need this service. I think um the mayor said often we don't have you know services that we sell but we do sell water and I know for Sanford creating that facility to make sure that they're able to provide water for other towns and cities around them is creating revenue and so if this is an opportunity for us to create revenue I think getting in front of it is a great idea. I think our our current facilities are really great. Um we've invested in them, made sure that they're you know I think folks can get in and get out fairly quickly whether it's even residential or commercial and so just figuring that out over the next three years as a you know as a as a proposal might be a great way to move forward.

So great. Well, thank you all. One quick question. Not so fast.

Sorry. One quick question. So along with the wash facility, I know many years ago we talked about a sorting facility uh and

the the potential of being the kind of regional hub for that and that smaller communities instead of doing again we have this contract out till 2028. Um instead of contracting that out is it thinking about doing our own internal sorting building that facility? I mean, I think it was part of the original EGI um list of projects and that would have been in what 2019 2020 maybe 21. Um and so if we're if we're if we know that that contract is coming up in 2028, really thinking through either through Central Pines or some other entity, is it worth investigating that regional approach where smaller communities um instead of pay instead of them contracting out, maybe it's a lower cost to them, but then it's still helpful for the city.

We've just circled around this waste question the entire time I've been on council and how do we divert this? It is a huge cost. It's getting more expensive. The environmental justice lens of it going to Samson County. It's been, you know, seven years around this

big broad question and I just hope that okay, we know when this contract is ending, we really need to have a really robust strategy on how we're going to deal with our trash and remove as much as possible out of it while also potentially offering something to smaller communities. So I don't want us to lose it's it's it's waste period compost a a wash facility a sorting facility I know in Europe they went back to incineration and it's real clean energy right like we have to get ahead of this and we can't just think that burring our trash three a count two counties over and spending that money on on gas is the way to do it so I hope that we take the next three years and and sooner um with this reorg to think of a different uh future for Durham in our in our region could just add to that. I I do want to lift up what you said about, you know, addressing some of the folks returning from being injustice involved. It is a great opportunity for folks to get in um and get city benefits. And so I I do think that that's a I hear the inklings of it all over, but pulling it together

would be a really good next step. I I would just respond if you would like. Um, so there is actually a solid waste consortium through uh uh Central Pines and uh actually the chairperson is seated behind me. Um so uh she has uh been involved ever since she returned to the city.

Glad to have her uh doing that. One of the biggest challenges you mentioned our contract is getting them aligned. There were some efforts made a few years back and we came really close, but there were some communities that had to jump. They really had to just go ahead and sign a contract.

And so it's getting them all aligned and getting people working together that can be a real challenge for us. But we're still trying to do that. Please, please let us know as electeds if there are I mean that that's where sometimes staff is going to hit roadblocks, right? So if there especially in the central spine space and I'm not in that space but I know um

mayor prom and council member Freeman both are um to to have those conversations cross-elected right because it really is a it is a way to move everyone forward and we're continuing to have these conversations around housing and transit that we have to get to this regional mindset and we're going to have to do the same thing with waste. Thank you council member just one question for Mr. Fentner or Mr. Williams I just want to connect the dots here.

So you've suggested a couple proposed service delivery changes to us, right? Yes. Um I also know yesterday when we were looking at the overall budget, we looked at the environmental services fund and there was a part of the reason we're increasing the revenue above revenue neutral was to address a budget gap, right? So is this partly these service changes designed to address that budget gap or is that a different thing?

Just want to make sure I understand. Yes, the the service changes help us from having more of a gap to fill. If we didn't make these changes, we would require additional revenue that would either come from additional transfer from the general fund or raising the

rate in the yard waste fee. And so these service changes help us to close that gap or not have a a more severe gap to close. So, so the amount of the uh on a penny that we're using to address the budget gap in environmental services that that is with these changes these changes wouldn't reduce that number. That is correct.

Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Thank you so much for the uh presentation.

Uh I want to ask a just maybe one or two questions about the next steps slide. Before we move on to that, I'm surprised that that the potential savings for bulky collections tweaking is only $52,000. I thought that would have been significant. That seems like a really I just thought it would have been more money saved, but and I'm wondering from a cost benefit if if what we're saving um in terms of convenience to our our residents is is that every penny counts. I don't want to minimize any amount, but I would have just thought that that would have been a significantly higher number than 52 grand um relative to the

previous slide of a half million dollars on I know it's much more robust engagement, but I I just thought that number would have been higher. Um but under next steps uh the bullets uh for next steps it's I think it's your next and final slide. Um advance at one. So bullet two evaluation of contracts vendors etc to identify opportunities for improved purchasing and contracting.

I mean not to be funny don't we already do that? We do. But now that we're merging these two departments together, there may be an opportunity to buy more stuff in bulk that we use commonly, contracts that may overlap. There may be an opportunity to consolidate them into one contract instead of having multiple.

So yes, we do it overall as a city, but now our purchasing power will be a lot different now that solid waste, public works, and portions of neighborhood improvement services are merged together. Gotcha. Gotcha. And and you know my from a Yeah,

that makes perfect sense from a volume point of view. Of course, my antenna went up terms of we getting the best price per individual, but but that makes perfect sense. The re relocation of staff from existing city facilities to other city facilities. [Music] Um do we have a working list of places we might be closing down and consolidating already?

Well, it's not closing down. So with the merger of the departments, you'll have staff here on the third floor, staff at the operations center on MLK Parkway, staff at the solid waste administration building, and staff at general services that all will be part of environmental street services. The ideal, excuse me, over the long term is to move staff to two locations at the operation center for the south side of the city and then at the solid waste administration building at the north side of the city. right now being scattered among several places is just very inefficient.

Absolutely. Let me rephrase that. I I didn't mean shut down in terms of functionality. I mean, is this going to free up some real estate that might now be empty and could be repurposed for other It won't free up

real estate that's empty, but it will free up real estate to move departments into spaces that will be more like each other to work together. Gotcha. Um All right, that's it. Thanks so much.

I appreciate the I also want to say I I love the the the nomenclature of environmental. Um not there's anything wrong with sanitation, but I I I think it's it conveys a more kind of holistic approach to our neighbors. I I really like the uh that name change with this reorg. So, good luck.

This I think this will become our what third largest department maybe. This is a lot of people think so far between behind fire and police. It's pretty big department. So, good luck.

Pace yourselves. Thank you. One just one more thing, Mr. Williams.

I do following that comment from Mayor for Tim. I just want to say congrat congratulations to you on being named the new head of this new environmental services department. A big you stepping up. I appreciate you're stepping up for the city and really taking on what's a big big important part of the sort of like the guts of what the city does.

So thank you for that. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Oh, sorry. And just I would just add it's important to know that um I think for I'll speak for myself in saying that if there's any way that I can be supportive, I need I would love to figure that out because I do think that with these changes, the city manager is taking a a risk so to speak and trying to figure this out and it's an experiment. And so I just want to make sure I'm present and paying attention to make sure that I'm or sharing that I would like if there's anything I can do whether it's with Central Pines or even if I need to get on the truck um just let me know what I need to do. All right.

Thank you. I that's your question slide but I think we've exhausted all of those. So uh thanks for your time. Thank you. Next up, sir.

Are we good? Do we need to buy a break? Are we good? Keep going.

All right. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I think next time we'll do like a um like a single meal in the middle of the morning.

We'll save some money. Are we taking a brief break or just checking with you all? Can we take five minutes? Yeah.

Yeah. I'll be right back.

Good morning, Leonardo Williams, Mayor Proton Middleton, members of council, manager Ferguson. My name is Ryan Smith, director of community safety. Uh, so let's first want to take a step back and see how far the department's come. The department was created in 2021, so four years ago.

When we were created, we were created with 13 FTEES and the proposed manager, the proposed budget put forward by manager Ferguson would put the department next year at 75 FTEES. Um just a quick timeline. So we spent our first year of operations doing a lot of planning. We launched HART at the end of that year um with 20 FTEES in that first year.

After that year of heart, uh the manager manager Paige proposed an expansion of our program that grew us from 20 to 47 FTs and expanded our pilot operations to operate citywide 7 days a week, 15 hours a day. Uh this the year that we're currently in was a steady year for us in terms of FTEEs. We did not grow. We did secure

some grants that allowed us to pilot new programs. So in this year, in addition to HART, we have actually just in the last week started an involuntary commitment unit pilot that's funded by state grant dollars, a familiar neighbors pilot that's funded by federal dollars, uh, and an office of survivor care that we are launching in June, and I'll talk more about um, as we go. Next year under the manager's reorganization, and I'll talk about these today as we go, we'll be adding in kind of growing scope, not only expanding heart potentially, but also adding in homeless services, the welcome home team, street outreach, harm reduction pilot that's funded by um opioid settlement dollars. And one thing I want to note, that's a typo on the slide.

So, last fiscal year we crossed a milestone of 10,000 responses. This year, we've already crossed 30,000 calls. And so as our as our um as we've been adding staff, we're getting to more and more calls. A little bit about uh the shape of our department under the reorganization. So historically, our

department has been primarily heart. And under the reorganization, we're we're moving toward a department that has three different arms or divisions. So one arm featured here on the left side is going to be 911 crisis response services. That's what you all think of as the heart program.

It's everything from our crisis response teams to co-response to uh to crisis call diversion. We are moving care navigation which has historically been under that branch to a new new a new division that we're creating under department that we're calling stabilization services. That division will include care navigation which is something that we've had our familiar neighbors program street outreach which I'll talk more about today homeless services and re-entry services. And then the middle division of that is uh support staff that support the entire organization from hiring to data to evaluation um to our core operations and administration.

The uh proposed budget adds 20 new FTEEs. I want to talk briefly about where those FTEEs are are coming on the ORC chart. Um eight of

those FTEEs are adding four new community response teams which I'll talk about in the next slide. Three of those are adding three co-response units. These are units that are currently funded under a three-year DOJ grant that is ending ending just at at the as it naturally ends, not because of anything else. Um, so that is going to those three staff are maintaining our current capacity and co-response.

If we were not to have those, we would actually get to that would reduce our capacity for co-response by 50%. The community response teams are adding to our capacity. We have six units. We'll go to 10 units and I'll talk more about what we get as a result of that.

Uh, additionally, there'll be five FTEEs added for street outreach, which I'll also go into more details. And then the remaining positions are core um core management and supervision positions in order to do this work. 2 2 million and that is driven by uh both increased

personnel services both as we are getting staff from other departments that are currently funded by the city as well as the 20 new FTEEs proposed in the budget and then increasing operation expenses uh for some of these growing operations a budget highlights. So I'm going to talk about six areas here. It's actually pretty small so hopefully you can see it. Number one there is uh the FY26 budget will expand HART's capacity and we'll go into more details in the next slides but again as I highlight that's four new community response team units and three co-response units.

Those last units are maintaining our current capacity. The others are expanding it. Second thing is we'll be adding street outreach function. I'll talk more about this.

This is something formally uh conducted by housing for new hope. We'll be adding five new staff to do that. Third is we'll be maintaining the Durham expansion and restoration program at the same funding levels uh that we had this year which is $245,000. This is a program led by legal aid that continues that would continue

next year at the same level to provide free legal services around expunction and driver's license restoration for Durham residents. Fourth, uh we the budget maintains the current funding for the Office of Survivor Care. So, in this current year's budget that we sit in today, we had $220,000 to pilot that program. We are thinking of that as a three-year pilot.

That program is launching next month. We have the staff currently hired, and I'll talk more about that when we get further into it, but this will maintain that level of funding to continue to staff to run a multi-year pilot of Office of Survivor Care uh to evaluate the benefits of that program. Fifth, the budget will uh move welcome home program. So at the same capacity that it currently has, which is two full-time and two part-time staff, that program that currently operates out of the office of economic and workforce development will move to community safety under our stabilization services um division. And six, we'll maintain funding for the homeless services team uh that currently sits in community development. That is six staff that will

move from community development to our department. and then the funding that they oversee will follow and we'll talk more about that. I want to start off talking about the case for heart expansion. Uh you know at the highest level the the case for heart expansion is that there are more calls that are eligible for heart than we're able to get to and that the need surpasses our current capacity.

We are currently at 47 FTEES. We are we maintain high staffing levels. Every one of our community response team units is staffed and out there in the field 7 days a week. Uh and over the last 12 months, there have been roughly 20,000 heart eligible calls that we could not get to within our current hours of operation. Um that includes the uh we get to about 55% of our community response team calls, only about 10% of co-response calls, 80% of crisis call diversion calls within our current hours. The budget that manager Ferguson has proposed would add four new crisis

response team units and it was our recommendation that that expansion occur within our current hours as opposed to going overnight. And this graph really demonstrates the main reason why. Uh the graph here is for uh goes through April of this fiscal year. So it's not a full fiscal year yet.

You can see in blue the number of CRT eligible calls that we got to within our current hours of operation and about 4,400 calls that we were not able to get to within our current hours of operation overnight where we have no staffing or units operating. m. We missed 2,000, you know, a little a little under 3,000 calls. So, our recommendation to grow this program within our current hours is because there's still a lot of calls that we're missing.

We want residents to increase their expectation of of what type of response they can expect within our current hours of operation. Adding these four units will add at least additional 3,600 additional calls. It will not get us yet to the level of call saturation

within our current hours of operation, but it will make a significant uh increase in the number of calls that our community response team units can get to. Under the proposed budget, there's no expansion for co-response. We would have six units. And I think the main driving factor there is in working with Chief Andrews uh where law enforcement is in terms of being ready to further expand co-response.

There are additional calls that uh are eligible for that response that we're not able to get to within our our current hours. And then in crisis called aversion again within our current hours this would hold steady which is sufficient staffing to operate that 7 days a week 12 hours a day um with three people dedicated to that function operating out of 911. Uh continuing with you know why expand heart. Um so first I always like to talk about safety. This was the first kind of key concern. Um, and our program, kind of consistent with what we're seeing in other programs across the country, is maintaining a very strong track record of safety, both for

ourselves and for the neighbors we're serving. Our heart team's uh, radio for emergent police backup less than half of 1% of the time. And when they do, we are grateful for law enforcement and our partners who show up. None of our responders have been injured on a call.

Uh, but we're grateful for that support. But that's a very good track record of safety. We our CRT units are very successful at diverting uh other responses. We respond and are able to resolve on scene, either resolve on scene or through transport without any assistance from other agencies over 80% of the time.

And that number would be higher. Sometimes we are responding because law enforcement was first to respond and they're requesting us. Right? So there's not a diversion there. But uh high degree of success there and then you know as I always tell you we we care about safety. We want to understand how our responders feel and that's why after every call our responders have to ask us answer a set of questions and one of them is they feel safe on the call and our responders continue today on over 99% of the time to report feeling

safe on the calls to which we're dispatching them. Another part of this is, I think, growing evidence the longer we're operating that we're also a benefit to law enforcement. And there's, you know, three main measures here that I want to share. One is we save law enforcement time when we're sending community response team units.

When crisis call diversion is answering a call without having to dispatch law enforcement, we're saving hours. And approximately so far this fiscal year, we've saved 8,000 hours in response time for law enforcement. That frees up law enforcement to be available for other calls where we need them. Additionally, the longer we've been doing this work and the more um law enforcement become familiar with what we have to offer, the more we're being requested to calls.

When we started two and a half years ago with HART, we were getting in that first year uh two to three uh you know, two to three requests per month or per week. Now we're getting 40. And so uh you can see here over 400 times we've been requested this fiscal year by Durham Police Department.

Uh, another thing as part of so we have still some ongoing multi-year evaluations. Um, one of them that RTI is conducting conducted a survey of law enforcement about their their um, perspectives on heart today and their perspectives on heart prior to us launching. One of the findings from those surveys was 94% of law enforcement viewed heart as I can't even read my own slide. uh viewed heart as uh helpful in responding to mental health calls and that 74% viewed heart as helpful in responding to calls that involve frequent callers, calls involving homelessness or substance use.

I think that over a short period of time, the level of increased support that uh and and benefit that law enforcement are saying they see that they they will say to me when I meet them that I hear from Chief Andrews and her meeting with um law enforcement about wanting more heart units out there. Um we see that evidence in the data. We see that evidence in the surveys. Um there one thing I there's an

additional um additional group at Duke that's doing um an evaluation of us. They've also been interviewing first responders. And I wanted to read quickly two quotes that came out of that. Um this first one is from an EMS responder.

Uh said, "I think the heart team really bridges the gap that we have. when we get there, we can check vital signs and we can identify that the person's in crisis, but unless we're taking them to the hospital, I have no other resource where the heart team does have those resources. And a second quote from a DPD officer. What I've seen is there's the progression of officers being skeptical to now officers saying, "Hey, is someone from heart available or can someone from heart come over here? " Hart is actually a fabric uh within the first response agency and we are trusting of the work that Hart is doing. Those are just two illustrative quotes but quotes that I

think are both reflective of the evidence we see here, reflective of my conversations, the conversations that I have with Chief Andrews about the way in which this new branch of public safety is benefiting and complementing the good work that is happening across public safety. I want to talk briefly about uh some ways in which heart is benefiting neighbors in crisis. Um so first let me talk about these first two graphs. They're looking at um so we're able to track um when calls are are heart eligible.

What are the differences we see when a heart eligible call receives a heart response versus when that heart eligible call does not receive a heart response because we're not able to get to that call. We're not staffed for it. We are limited in some of the things that we can compare because in order to compare something, we need all responders to be tracking the same things. But some of the things we're able to compare are where are folks transported. And so for heart eligible calls, when that heart eligible call gets a heart response, we see differences in where people are transported. And a good example of that is the Durham Recovery and Response

Center where we see over twice the rate of transports from a heart responder to go to DRRC um as opposed to if it's getting a law enforcement response. And I think that is um that is not uh critical of law enforcement. I think that is just evidence of having social workers and others who are able to perhaps connect with neighbors who are more familiar with other resources who are able to get someone to voluntarily go to DRRC for either detox or for mental health support. Um but we see those increased rates of transportation which to me is about getting people connected to care in crisis in an involuntary way.

The other thing are arrest. Um, so the same thing if it's a heart eligible call and this includes co-response or CRT. If it's it's heart eligible and it gets a heart response versus a law enforcement response, we also see differences in arrest rates. Um, we don't see no arrest rates on heart response and that is because one, this includes co-response and two, our CRT units are able, if they need to, to escalate a call to law enforcement, but we do see significant

reductions um, uh, in arrest rates. I want to note that the highest part of that graph for our calls is 4%. So arrest are things that happen uh rarely in Durham, but we still see a significant decrease if it's a heart eligible call and getting a heart response. And then finally, heart is able, you know, we resolve things on scene when we're not able to.

We're able to connect about a third of people to community- based resources and care that they need. Um and some of the limitations on doing that are if it's housing, we don't have any. We're not able to make a connection. and we might be able to connect someone up to entry point.

Uh there's a lot of challenges there, but in a third of times we're able to connect someone to other existing resources in our community that folks need and want. Um these are data points. Briefly, I just want to share a few examples of like what does this look like this year. I'll be brief, but here's an example of um a crisis called aversion call that happened in November of this year. A mother called 911 her daughter about her daughter who was threatening to run into traffic. We got

a crisis call counselor on the phone immediately with that mom. She was able to talk to the mom and get the daughter on the phone and talk to the daughter. Was able to deescalate the daughter safety plan with the mom and daughter where they felt good and where that crisis was no longer an imminent threat. Um such that there was no need to dispatch a first responder and then the crisis call diversion counselor followed up and called to check in and make sure everything was good.

That's an example of the benefit of having a clinician in our call center able to support people in crisis and we're appropriate sometimes able to divert any first response and provide someone with the care and support they need. Um a different call um this is from December. A our community response team uh responded to a call with a single father and his 8-year-old daughter who had just become unsheltered. The team made an immediate referral to Care Navigation and Care Navigation worked through multiple place placements to make sure the father and 8-year-old daughter were into shelter and then by January were able to help the father connect and get

employment and get a one-bedroom apartment. So, a different type of example um completely different example from a welfare check in February. uh CRT responded to a call uh because uh a family called because they had not heard from a loved one. When they uh when they checked in on this person, this person was in the process of giving $25,000 in cash to uh purchase Bitcoin for a scam.

But the team was able to intervene in that moment, avoid that person being uh being a victim of the scam, and help educate them on the on ways to like things to think about and things to avoid. Um just the other day um uh we had a CRT team was actually requested by law enforcement to a call. There had been uh a gentleman who had gotten off a Greyhound bus, gone in to use the restroom and the bus left before he got back out and all of his everything that he owned was on that bus. This was a person who was a

homeless veteran who was on their way to a family member and all of their documentation, everything was on that bus. DPD called Hart to see if they could figure out a way to support that person. Hart got on the phone with Greyhound. Uh they figured out that that bus was going to be stopping in Winston Salem and there was going to be a transport and there was going to be some delay time and the goal was could we get that person to Winston Salem so they could get back on that bus which great said if they got there they could get back on the bus.

They were going to family so they would not be at least for some period of time potentially unsheltered in Durham. Uh, and the team was able to figure out a way to get that person there on the bus, get their possessions, um, and get back to a family member. Um, so there's lots of different ways. Like if you were ask me what does Hart look like?

Hart looks like so many different stories of meeting and supporting people in crisis. And I share these because we collect these stories. These data points are all great, but doing ride alongs, having journalists come in and tell stories ourselves. Collecting stories to help people understand what this looks like is, I think, an important way of helping

people understand the way that this type of response benefits neighbors. All right, I'm going to transition now to some of the other work and the newer work in our department. And first, I want to talk about the office of survivor care. This was something as a uh to recall for you that the community safety and wellness task force made a recommendation to this body about creating an office of survivor care about that being placed in our uh in our department. We received that funding this year and we approached that just like we approached the development of heart which is we took our time we inherited the work that we got the good and thoughtful work but we also met with and this was you know Lee Mer who is one of our clinical managers who is here led a lot of this work we took time to meet and understand the landscape of folks who were already doing this work because we don't want to be spending time duplicating or replicating work that others are doing we wanted to understand where the gaps were. We wanted to meet with people who were who were themselves survivors that had lost someone to violent crime to understand as we were

building this office, how could we take the resources that we had, put them to best use and then understand if this office um over the next couple of years demonstrates a benefit that's worthy of continuing or not. Uh Lee has done that work. We have hired the first manager and the other clinician that's going to come in is starting next month. So we will be fully staffed in the next couple of weeks and that work will begin over the course of all that research and meetings and talking with other programs in the country.

The way that we are going to focus those two staff initially is in these three main areas. I'll talk about them briefly and if you'all have questions about it at least here to answer it. The first area is bridge therapy and assertive outreach following a moment where someone has say lost a loved one to gun violence. One of the things that we heard consistently from DPD victim services and from other partners is that it is it there is it can take a long time after the aftermath of such a traumatic experience to get someone connected to therapy and counseling. And yet what we know from

research is that first month can be really critical and that if we can get someone connected to therapy and counseling more quickly and serve as a bridge to other longer term counseling that has been shown to to measurably reduce things like post-traumatic stress dis disorder. So this is a real gap that we've identified, one that we think we're positioned to help support. Uh and so one of the things we'll be uh working with DPD victim services, working with our hospitalbased violence intervention program and others to provide that service um while we're working to get someone into um other longer term counseling um and therapy. The second thing is helping neighbors advocate existing resources that can support survivors after, for example, the loss of loved one.

We have a state victim's compensation fund. We know from talking to that fund and looking at the data that um a lot of folks who apply for that in Durham don't end up getting that money. Folks may not um may not even apply for it to be be aware of it. One of the things we want

to do is support people in that process, understand, help them understand if they're eligible, if they are eligible, support them in navigating and applying for those funds and see if we can increase the ability to access and draw down state dollars to support people um in these situations. And the third um focus area is to act as a coordinating entity. So we do have groups that are doing important work in the space, but what we heard consistently in our meetings with them is that a lot of it is siloed, is disjointed of a real hunger for a group that can serve as a coordinating body um and a support for this office playing that role. So these will be the three major areas.

Um, and at the end, if you all have more questions about this, uh, again, Lee's here to dive deeper with you on it, I'll talk about homeless services. So, as you all know, as part of, uh, manager Ferguson's reorganization on July 1st, the homeless services team, which is currently in community development, will move to our office. That includes um, six staff. This these staff also serve as

the lead agency currently for the Durham Continuum of Care. those responsibilities will move to us. I want to talk about what we've been doing briefly. So, a lot of our focus since that announcement has been working closely with those staff and leadership in the department to support a smooth transition.

There's a lot involved in that. Um, another thing that we have been committed to doing is not only working closely with those staff, but we have been intentional in outreach to community partners and and really on a listening tour to meet with our providers, to meet with others in this space who serve on the continuum of care to understand how how we in this new role can best support and serve the continuum of care to understand their ideas, their concerns. Um, and then importantly, our top priority, our top priority in FY26 in addition to supporting the good work that that team is doing is to support the creation of a strategic plan and framework. That's something that we have heard as a clear priority from you, something that we have heard from members of HSAC and others. And we intend to get after that with all deliberate speed and for that

to be to help inform the recommendations that we bring back to you as part of the next budget cycle because I think there's a lot of good ideas out there. I have my own ideas and perspectives from what we have observed in this work. But I think investing in this process, making sure that we get started quickly and that we do that well will help really inform and help us prioritize among the various things and various ideas that are circulating out there which of those will really help us advance a Durham where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring. The team that we're getting, there are some fantastic people on that team and I'm excited for them to come.

I think there's going to be real benefit and having the homeless services team um paired with folks who are out there doing the work on the ground every day. I think that will really benefit both groups to be working um in even more closely than we have. Uh the work that uh that homeless services has helped support either through the uh through their through the COC federal dollars or through designated housing fund. That work will continue which will include um coordinated entry and

diversion dollars, shelter and white flag, permanent supportive housing, medical respit, rapid rehousing, landlord engagement. These are all things that the city has invested in that the city's going to continue to invest in. There are no in the current budget significant increases across those areas in part because we want to focus on the strategic plan first. have that inform which of these areas or others are most critical to invest dollars in uh to make the kind of uh difference that we all I think want to see.

Street outreach. So this past spring, Housing for New Hope, which has been doing street outreach for the last 5 years, uh, and longer, but under the UCA, under the unsheltered coordinating agency the last 5 years, announced in an HAC meeting that they were going to pivot away from that work that they've been doing well for the last 5 years to focus more on permanent supportive housing, which is an area where we desperately need them. uh in that they made a recommendation that that function move under community safety. A recommendation that I support because I see it really aligning well with our community

response teams with the presence that we have in the community seven days a week with our expanded hours of operation. We are actively working now to be ready to launch that on July 1st. We have been interviewing uh we'll have five new positions created under this. We have been actively interviewing those staff currently.

those staff are being hired as temporary positions and if the budget is approved uh then those positions would be uh funded at least through the next year because manager Ferguson has uh stated that this is something that he wants us to run with. Uh but as part of the strategic planning process, we'll be evaluating this and everything else. Does it make sense if that work continues to sit in community safety or not? But we are going to be prepared because the contract that housing for new hope has ends in June 30th to launch this in July and I think we're on track to do that so that we can avoid disruption. This is a really important service about making sure that we are meeting people where they're at in our community who are unsheltered, that we're building trust and rapport, that we're helping connect them as quickly as we can to shelter and to housing. And we're going to be able to do this um at

the same or greater capacity. We will have more hours for our street art which will be running than it ran under housing for new hope. And we're going to do it at a lower cost in part because we're able to leverage some of the benefit of infrastructure uh and of the other heart response units um in doing this. Finally, I want to talk about re uh re-entry.

So, this is really about welcome home. Welcome home, as you know, is a program that originally started under the IT team and budget management services. It was moved to OEWD because of the connection with workforce development. Uh on July 1st, that team will also come under us.

It includes a manager and three staff um that are peer support specialists, one full-time and two part-time. And welcome home um is about providing a better one to first the first first few months back home from incarceration. It is recognizing that that journey back home is very difficult, overwhelming. There's a lot of different things you're trying to navigate and challenge. And what the city is doing through this program is recognizing uh the expertise, the trust

of folks who have gone through that experience, who have themselves made that journey and and being able when someone comes home to pair them with a peer support specialist who can provide um hour 60 to 90 hours of peer support who can help them connect up to the local re-entry council. um who can help them uh identify the goals that they have for themselves and set them and walk alongside them in meeting those goals. That program will continue to function as it has. I think there I think that there is some good um data reporting that is happening, but I also think there's an opportunity to build upon that.

Um this is just an example uh from March of this year. Um welcome home program supported someone who had been incarcerated for 20 years and came back home to Durham. person was facing, as you can imagine, after being 20 years incarcerated, a lot of challenges. And that person was connected to Welcome Home. Between uh this was in uh I believe in January. Between January and March, Welcome Home

staff were able to support that person in securing stable housing, obtaining a state ID, gaining employment, and then working toward reinstating a driver's license over those first couple of months or support. So, there's a lot of good work going here. Again, I think there can be a real benefit of connecting up welcome home to community safety uh for a number of reasons. I think this in in some ways is similar to the way care navigation is developed.

It's not meant to be long-term support. This is standing in the gap, connecting to other existing resources. This is also a model that employs peer support specialist. And I think that we are probably the department in the city that hires the most and and deploys the most peer support specialist.

So having those staff under one roof, I think can provide a lot of additional support. Um, and we're we're excited uh excited to be adding this. Our top priority for this program is going to be integrating a guaranteed income component to it. Um, I will have more to share soon, but we're working through that and our intention is we're going to get that going. Um, and really excited about that opportunity as

well. I'll take your questions. Um, council member Cook. Great.

Um, I have a lot of questions. I was going to try and consolidate them down. Uh, congratulations part of it. Um overall I think most of this accommodation is at the very least it's gonna going to really help us move forward and a really innovative and safe way.

So I'm excited to see how that that goes. Um and I'm looking forward to to the results of thisation. So on the heart expansion, want to say thank you for breaking those numbers down. I know heard from

community members asking for overnight or for full-time heart response. I think this is really clear that where we're missing the bulk of the calls is actually during um hours that we already work. also in terms of cost analysis, we don't have to do the overhead of having adding lots of folks over and so appreciate those statistics. It's really good to see on that graph just how many more calls we can catch um by doing that increase during our working hours.

Um I hope eventually continue to grow this program, but I think for right now this is a really awesome step. You talked about expanding capacity with three new co-response units. I'm curious because the last time you presented to us, you told us that there was an issue sometimes with um having co-response units because there was not staffing at the police department to always have those co-response units. So, I'm wondering if you could to that. And obviously we're

staffing it, but if you could speak to that, how we know that we'll get those units or any So to to to clarify that point, these units are going to take units that have been funded by a grant. So these aren't new units. These are going to sustain the six units of co-response that we have so that as the grant comes to an end at the end of this fiscal year, we don't lose half of our capacity and co-response. So it's not adding new capacity.

We, you know, Chief Andrews has been a real champion of this program. We will staff and operate all six of those units. Um, and there is, there are a lot of calls that we do not get to within our current hours, but those aren't new units that those are new staff that are maintaining capacity, the capacity that for three years has been funded by a federal grant. So, the the four new um CRT units, those are brand new.

Those are brand new. Those are adding. We'll be moving from six to 10 CRT units. Has there been any issue

with staffing of the the no for for community response teams? The with the response. I it I would just say it's taken a little longer to staff. Um uh but there won't be obstacles for us in making sure all six of those units are staffed and running over the next year.

And I also think while currently today we miss about 80 there's about 88% of eligible calls for co-response that we're not getting to because there's a lot of calls that could benefit from that. We are some of that will be as we maintain six units for a full year. We'll see an increase in that. Some of that will be Chief Andrews and I working on to continue to think about the most efficient way to deploy those units.

And how much of that do I want to get into just because it's getting into the weeds? I think that there is some increased efficiency we can get with our six units. That's not going to make up 80 to 90% of calls. But I think that can double the number of calls that we're getting to is just maintaining the six

units at full staffing if we're able to do that for most of the year and we're able to create a little better alignment between DPD schedules and heart schedules and learn from cities like Denver that are deploying their their co-response units slightly different without getting to visa. think that we'll we'll increase volume in co-response without adding new units. But just to be clear, because I don't want I want to like set clear expectations. There's a lot of co co-response calls, over half co-response calls.

Clearly, we're not going to get anywhere close to answering those calls right now. But it's also true that if you were to give us if you were to double or triple the number of co-response units, we would not be able to fill those. But can we fill these these maintain six units? Yes, we can do that.

Sorry, we would not be able to fill them if you were to give us a bunch more co-response units. We just wouldn't be able to. We don't have the resources elsewhere in the city to be able to formulate the teams to have them go out. Right. So, in working through the budget process, always check in with Chief

Andrews on co-response. When we were going back through this process, Chief Andrews was supportive and prepared and believed that we could um you know, that we could have added potentially three more units of co-response. she felt that there was a path forward for that um but did not feel there was a path forward. " I cannot tell you with confidence that I think that we would be able to staff those on both sides of the house next year.

I have no problem sitting here and telling you we can add four more community response team units. And I feel very confident that we can these three positions, most of which are currently filled anyway, that we will maintain uh six co-response units. I feel confident in that. That's I would I would love to you this, but I would love to see a check in about that 80% of the co response like maybe Okay, I think those were my

questions. So, moving on to home. What? What did that Oh, microphones are like flipping on and off.

That's intriguing. I also got a text message that some of the audio on the Zoom screen is probably related right now. So, are we seeing flash? So, mine is turning yellow.

Both buttons. I turn mine off. The mic just didn't stop. I did this screen here earlier.

Yeah. Do you have this connection failure? I'm going to reach out to our vendor and

uh right now with that it's definitely a system there which is just a slightly step above what I can handle. Oh, yours just went off. Mine has never set up. It's like it went through an update.

Yeah. Think I think I they're gonna have issues. I think we're good. I think we're good right now.

Yeah, I think we're good. If I can Great. Okay. Well, hope that works.

Um, so moving on to homelessness services. Um, okay. I have a question, a pretty specific one about medical respit. Yeah, you already know where I'm

going. I can see. I'm not No, I'm just anticipating wondering if I'm going to know the answer to the question. Fair enough.

So, go ahead. Yeah. So, my understanding was was that there is money out for that. Um, and I don't know if we have any further information about why we haven't seen any results of the money that's been spent on that.

Um I I don't I think that it might actually be county ARPA dollars, but um if we could get some information about medical respit and what's already going on there because I seem to think that there has been some funding that is out in the world um that has already been given to someone to do something. I'm seeing some nods um and that we have not seen any results of that. I want to ask a clarifying question and I may need to follow up with you on this. Um, so I know that there has been some talk that the county uh through ARPA was $2 million that went initially

to housing through uh housing for New Hope that was going to be a kind of enhanced street outreach that was going to have um and and the enhanced capacity of that was going to be providing staff like nurses or nurse practitioners who could do things like potentially overtime more street medicine type of components. So if you were talking about that one, I actually don't have a lot of answers. My understanding is housing renew Hope is that that that the county wants to continue that work that some of that work is going to be administered by Central Pines, but I sitting here today have not heard from the county detailed plans on how that's going to work and how we can think about that and its connection up with street outreach or heart. I'm confident that that will happen.

But if you're talking about that and you may be I don't know but it sounds like that's pro we're probably talking about the same pool of money but if we're doing medical respit I think that we should know where the dollars are being spent in the community that are happening in the same yeah relevant field. So, um I would I would like more information on that. Great. Um

and then Oh, street outreach. Um you said that you think you'll be able to lower the cost by leveraging systems in place. Um what what is that going to look like? Does it look like where we already have heart officers out doing check-ins where we add like things to like because I know that we have um a friendly faces is it friendly faces team neighbors?

Yeah, familiar neighbors. Okay. Sorry, I can't remember all the words. Um that we have the a couple of teams that are out doing check-ins anyway.

Do we are we able to like add questions to to their list or what what does that look like in terms of making it more efficient? Um, so Housing for New Hope had um about $430,000 through designated housing funds for that function, employing five people. We're going to employ five people at um 380,000. We'll be able to leverage our existing kind of crisis

supplies and other thing to support that work, which is why I say we can do it for less. We're going to structure their shift schedules differently in part because we're we're already uh housing for new hope, you know, primarily ran Monday through Friday. Sometimes they would shift their hours a little early or a little later, but we already are running different types of schedules that allow us to cover more hours with our five staff. Plus, we'll be able to leverage when those staff aren't on.

We do have uh four staff dedicated to familiar neighbors, which are really able to provide longer term case management support where needed. Uh and additionally, we have CRT units that will be working very closely with street outreach uh for additional connection over weekend hours. I think those things being aligned and under the same roof will get added benefits from those things all working together and working closely. Okay. Um in term Okay, sorry I'm jumping back to the homelessness services. Um do we

have Okay. Do we have do we have any additional requests? I think the answer is no. There's no additional requests in the budget this year about homelessness services.

Is that correct? Everything's being funded within um and I might look for Christina to support me some on this. Um so all of the um everything was funded within target. So there are designated housing funds.

the funds that community development already had, those dollars are being used to support work. An example, I believe 700,000 of that is going for flexible housing subsidies. But there isn't, the city is not, and I think this is correct, and this is why, and if you can't, that's fine. The city is not there's not a major new investment in new things on top of what the city was doing last year in homeless services. It's not like for example there are proposals out there on day shelter, expanding non- congregate shelter, all of those things. Those do not sit in this budget and I think the

primary reason for that is believing that we need a good strategic plan in place that can help really inform among these various potentially good ideas and which of those things do we really need to invest in and at what level where are the critical gaps, what parts of a system are really working well and what parts are not and I think a strategic plan will help us get those answers. But I don't Christina, do you feel that that was Oh, sorry. You I need this. Sorry.

Christina Reen, budget and management services. Yes, I think Ryan has described this well or um but that we are moving. So, there will be budget moving that what is currently in our community um development department. Um we'll be moving to community safety.

That's almost about um $2 million that'll be moving from that department into the new department. And so, um, that is not new money, but it is money that has kind of been in the in the budgets already. Thank

you. We're all dealing with tech issues. Um, yeah. So, I I think I've talked to a lot of my colleagues about this.

Um, I'm just I'm gonna wait for the photos. Okay, I've talked to a lot of colleagues about this. I'm gonna say it again. Um, we brought this up.

I brought this up at the budget retreat. Um, I understand that we want to work on a strategic plan and that makes sense to me. And also, this is a crisis that is ongoing and is not going to get better or wait for a strategic plan. And several of the things that I had offered at the retreat were um were short-term and lowcost initiatives that were meant to be gap fillers in this time where we are seeing extremely long wait lists for our um for our shelters and that's just the people that are applying to shelter and there's so many people not applying because they don't trust the system at all. So that number is is extremely not representative. But

um even folks who are trying to get into congregate shelters um and think that they could work in a congregate shelter are not able to access. We just do not have enough space. Um and for me this the options that were given and also were prioritized by the council. I think that the day shelter was like the third highest priority by the council um or up there in the top five.

Um that's it is a low cost with community buyin and something that would serve an emergent need right this moment. Um I'm not going to be comfortable waiting for a strategic plan to come in place. Now I'm not saying that I want this to be I just feel like I have 17 microphones in my face. Um, I don't I don't mean this to be a long-term solution because if the strategic plan finds that a day shelter is not going to serve us in the long term, that's totally fine. Um, but that is a a emergent emergent need in our community to get folks out of the

elements during the day to get them connected to resources to help them navigate. Um, and this is we are in a growing financial crisis and evictions are on the rise. folks are facing homelessness at levels that they've never faced before. Um and so day shelter and then also the other option was not the other option, an additional option was um alternate sheltering um non- congregate sheltering.

Again, very very low barrier um and also not necessarily permanent options. Um I'm not comfortable waiting for the strategic plan to come to add these extra services. Um, and I think that they are extremely extremely low cost. And we were just talking about market or uh uh C Mayor Prom just stated that the savings of the um of the bulk pickup was only $50,000. Like that that was a good portion of what I had requested for a

day shelter. Like th these are the small amounts that we're talking about. So for me, I don't feel comfortable delaying. Um, and that's going to be where I'm going to land.

If we don't see any emergent emergent um solutions right now where we have community support for those things, um, I'm not going to be able to support just waiting to to get those solutions. So, what is your request? My request is that we get the day shelter put back in um as a short-term option until we get the the the results from a strategic plan. Um and I would also request that there be alternative sheltering options. We I had brought up safe sleeping um and pallet housing and we can go back and look at my requests from the budget retreat, but they were pretty small in terms of financial investment and I had always meant for them to be short-term while we waited for a strategy.

Testing, testing, testing. Are they back online? They are. Yeah.

Can I uh share just briefly? I just in response to that um there were some additional numbers that I wanted to share. I just want to go back uh because I feel like they are facts relevant to council in this moment. Um the preliminary numbers from the point in time count uh were recently shared by community development.

Just want to report those to you since we're talking about homelessness in Durham um with asterisks by what the point in time count is. And you know it it's an imperfect tool but um something that's annually done. So the point in time count for 2025 showed that the number of people experiencing homelessness on that point in the year was 331 which was down from 405 the previous year and that is and that uh I want to stress that is one number among that it did find though that the number of chronically homeless had nearly doubled from the previous year. So while while that number found

the total it also found chronically homelessness had increased. There are other numbers that are relevant every week. Um, coordinated entry provides an an email out to providers uh that I also get. Um, so another relevant fact to share with you is this week the number of people who were waiting to get into shelter, 111 individuals were waiting to get into shelter and 62 families were waiting to get into shelter.

I feel like those are numbers that are important for me to share with you in this conversation that you're having. What the last two numbers? Uh this week it was 62 families and 111 individuals for I believe uh it was like four that represents 405 people or some I can double check the number but yeah who are seeking and on a wait list to get into shelter correct. So this this is um and I I respect and and appreciate the um the urgency around

this. Actually, I'm going to I'm going to wait on my comments and let some other questions be asked. Um did Council Member Freeman? Are your questions different?

Well, it's for the whole presentation. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and go. Um then um this is around all of the presentation. So um can you go back a couple of slides?

Yes. Um that Thank you. That's it. Um okay.

Um, one of the things that and I think we're getting a presentation about familiar faces at our next joint city county. So I think that that that part of that will the medical respit piece potentially could we'll have opportunities to ask questions around that. Um, I just first of all I want to say thank you for the presentation. Um,

I feel pretty confident and on the heart side of stuff. Um, I agree with what council member Cook said. I think the data is real clear on where the biggest impact can can be and so I don't have a lot of questions. I appreciate the slide on the org chart and where it's moving.

Um I do want to say that one of the things that we have heard or at least I have heard pretty consistently is that we're not doing a good job tracking the units that might be coming online to the special populations. Um and so I would like to have a good understanding because a whole bunch of stuff is about to come online this year. So I think to me while I understand supportive housing what you might just units period and within those RFPs there are certain units that are supposed to be designated for special populations. And so if we are not tracking that and we're not doing the landlord engagement, it doesn't really matter if we throw more money at the problem if we're not doing the alignment necessary

and the hard work necessary to make sure that there is a unit for an individual who fits the criteria. And the criteria is hard and it's wonky and we could put $10 million more and it won't matter if we're not doing that alignment. And that is a big miss that we've had historically. And it's why I think one of the reasons we're seeing, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that we're seeing these numbers is because we haven't done our due diligence in making sure of doing that matchmaking and working within the COC to make sure that that matchmaking has happened.

So I really applaud that this reorg is is working because HART has been doing street outreach at the end of the day. So it was becoming duplicative and essentially a waste of money to have essentially two street outreach teams. One of them on the heart side that's around and already plugged into 911 already has relationship with law enforcement, right? Like it it became and it this is a much more efficient way. Now I understand we're going to try and collect data over the next year, but

from my lens it makes a lot of sense, but we have to do better on this this matchmaking piece so that we can get folks in. I also want to highlight and I saw this the um the pilot the non the um involuntary commitment pilot that's a key tool. I know we don't want to talk about that tool. I know it's scary because of our instit, you know, our history of institutionalization in this country and who got institutionalized, but we have to be real about some of these folks that you're naming that are chronically homeless and some of their underlying issues and the level of support that they're going to need to actually not be chronically homeless.

And we're not doing anyone any services by avoiding those hard conversations. I also want to name that the state historically has funded that space and there is no funding there. To your point earlier in your conversation, that anecdote that you shared about that parent calling, which is a terrifying place, as a mom of three teenagers, everybody I know has been in that space at this point after COVID with their teenager. Uh there are

no beds in this state and that's with for people who have insurance and are middle class. You will not find a bed in this state if you are facing a mental health crisis. So if you are chronically unhoused, you're not going to find a bed and you're not going to get the services that you need. And so we have to figure out on the local side, is there a space, and I know these conversations are happening with the county and with Alliance Health, we need a few of these emergency beds that can provide that long-term care for folks who need 6 months of support of steady support so that and then we need to have a unit ready for when they come out.

And until we do that, well, we're not going to see these numbers go down. And that's the crux of what has to happen. And so I hope that I I I have Ryan, you've been with us since the IT team. We've seen you work lots of crazy miracles. Uh and so I have a lot of faith in you and your team and how you've worked with Chief Andrews and our ecosystem in Durham, which is radically different than the

ecosystems in other communities. And so um and we also have to be patient on our side right now. This is we have to be patient with this is going to take some time. Um, so I understand the frustration of we need to put more here.

I'm not comfortable. I mean, we had this conversation at the budget retreat. We're not trueing up the housing sense. It's we're supposed to have two dedicates dedicated housing.

We're not doing that with this budget. That was a conversation that we had at retreat and um those are there's a consequence to making that decision which means that we're not going to have the dollars to do some of these pilots that council member Cook is discussing partly because where we are in our housing plan is we're at the end of a plan and we don't have a new plan and we don't have a director and and there's a lot of things changing in this space. So we can throw money at it but it doesn't mean we're going to get any solutions uh long term. And so I'm not and as somebody who's been doing this work for a long time, that is a frustrating thing to acknowledge, but it's the where we are.

And then um I want to just I know you've been in the community. I know you've been in a lot of the supportive services conversations and the pre-shelter housing subcommittee conversations. So, as you're taking charge of this work, I hope that those conversations can inform and help us get get to where we need to get more quickly, including with the strategic plan. That's all I have to say.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Council Member Freeman. Can you hear me? Thank you.

I appreciate um Council Member Caviierro's um comments and also with Council Member Cook. I just will say I think what becomes even more pressing is that without addressing it in the short term the library just becomes the alternative day shelter. And so that's just just putting that out there. I did want to start by saying I really um I I just want to say I have a proud moment and just appreciating how far you've come Ryan. Um I know you started in this work around the faith

coalition. I know it was with the Southern Coalition, the Southern Coalition um for social justice and the harm reduction, like all of this has been going on long before I even was on council. And so I know that that work to get us to this point. Um it always takes time.

It takes a lot of it takes it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of diligence. And you've been very patient and diligent about staying on top of this. Um, I am appreciative of the city manager just kind of really filling out what community safety is, that it's not just heart and really thinking about how we kind of come up and think about community safety in a real like holistic way beyond just the calls for, you know, diversion or crisis management or homelessness. There's so many elements in this conversation. Um, it's not lost on me. I did I did just take a few notes to say like I'm I'm excited about the addition

of the survivor care and I'm concerned about the moving of the 2 million from community development to community safety because is it is it going to be like designated for specifically like the supportive housing or housing for folks with cle cell or AIDS like that is real and like a real separate line in our um in our work, I guess, so to speak, as a city. And I don't know if that's going to get lost in in this transition, but I want to make sure I lift it up and say that people who are people who are facing um you know, rental increases who have cickle cell or AIDS is very different from folks who are chronically homeless based on you know, mental illness or mental health. I'll speak to that briefly. So I think I think part of what you're talking about is hapwa. Yeah, that is going to remain that is not coming with us. And in part the reason that's not coming with us is because in talking to staff it is our understanding that 80% that the clear

majority of that population um are not um their primary they're not starting from a place of being unsheltered and so that work is going to remain um in the newly configured department that merges community safety and NIS. So I I think that speak addresses that one point. Yeah. Thank you.

And then I just just um and piggybacking on Council Member Cabier's comment about tracking the units, it would be nice to see what is available because I think you know in in a vacuum 62 families um is a lot. But if we if we only had 20 units to begin with um we need to do something completely different than what we're talking about. And and I know that the the study usually comes first, but I I do agree with Council Member Cook. Um it's hard to look someone in the face and say, "We got to wait till we we look at why you need housing um to figure out where you're

" Yeah. My staff intimately are familiar with that difficulty and frustration. Thank you. Thank you.

That's all. Thank you, Council R. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Director Smith, for the presentation. Um yeah, I mean this is the huge success story and I want to thank you and your team for um essentially we we've transformed the landscape of community safety in this community and it's it's a big success and I know that you're proud of this. I know the community is proud of the work you've done. So thank you for that.

Um and thank you for stepping up into this new role of an expanded department. Just looking at the timeline, it's been a pretty quick and rapid um development here. Then all the new stuff from last year, the IVC pilot, the familiar neighbors thing, office survivor care, all exciting stuff. So, I want to thank you for that.

Um and I think the reorganization does provide a new opportunity or new chance to even kind of get more efficiencies. I think bringing in the homeless services stuff is the right move. And so, both congrat congratulate you and also like it's a

big challenge and I want to give you all the support you you need to to succeed there. Um, I also want to say, well, I'm also eager to see the um the guaranteed income piece now in your department. See that actually happen next year. That's really exciting to me and I'm look forward to that.

I also just want to thank you for what is first class management of your department. Um, you've got a clear vision. You're tracking benchmarks for performance and you're reporting clearly on your performance. That's like a model for how departments should operate in the city.

So, I want to thank you for that. Um, we clearly are like we have more challenges as we've identified here, right? Homelessness is still a challenge. There's more to be done.

Um, but I am comfortable with the the direction right now, the budget we have here and look forward to supporting you and your team and as you go forward. So, thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Council Member Baker.

Director Smith. Um, you have taken on a lot here. when we sat down and looked through the PowerPoint slides, I think I've heard of collective sigh from from everyone up here. Um, I mean, change,

creation, transformation, I mean, that is what you are in charge of. And um, I'm in awe of of all of our city's leaders and and staff and all of the the work that they're doing. Um, and you have a lot on your plate. Um, it's almost like we say, it's hard.

Give it to Ryan. Um and and you're in charge of of figuring it out. Um and this is this is an area where we are seeing the downstream effects of upstream polluters and pollution from disinvestment and uninvest underinvestment um from the federal government and the state governments who could solve they could solve these problems. Local governments don't have the resource to to solve the problem of homelessness.

the federal government does and they choose not to and cities have to deal with the consequences and the impacts and people are moving from city to city and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It just makes it very very difficult and it's getting worse. I mean record

homelessness nationwide last year and it's only it's only going to get worse and so um this is a a major task. I am so excited about this the homelessness services strategic plan. It is very necessary and I'm thrilled that um council um chose to prioritize that and make it something that we we understand our role in this as a convenor and a coordinator of many many different actors in this space um faith-based, nonprofit, um governmental um in in making sure that we're providing the very best um the very best outcomes with the the very limited resources that we have available to to us. So, um there's a lot there's a lot of of work that you're doing in the space of of heart and everywhere else, but I want to specifically and and especially lift up the work that that is to be done around um homelessness services and very

much appreciate that. Um when when we uh m Mr. manager when we sat down and and discussed um this work phase one you said you shared that that information out with us about the the strategic plan um upcoming phase one being I I believe it was one year of work followed by phase two um I I think you mentioned sort of setting aside some funds that are not specifically and correct me if I'm wrong but not specifically designated just yet that we would have a better understanding of how to use maybe in the interim of once uh starting on the strategic plan work. I wonder if you could speak to that as it relates to um the the comments um by uh council member council member Cook because obviously if there there's anything that we can do um in the short term to address some of the most severe some of the folks who are who are in the most severe um position in their lives. uh that that would be

worth that would be worth investing in. I I I know that you've spent a lot of time having conversations and I I just want to bring it all together and and get get a get your explanation of of where we are in terms of because this the day shelters was a was a high priority. Why did we decide not to to do that and um what would next steps be? Thank you, council member.

So uh first to talk about the phases of the strategic plan uh I'm not sure how I phrased it. What I intended to convey is of of the full proposal we received. I was seeking uh concurrence to move forward with phase one with the possibility uh and perhaps likelihood that we would engage that process for the future phases. just wanted to get started and also uh have not had a chance to have thorough conversations with the full uh group of of uh community organizations that need to be

part of that. So didn't want to commit to the full scope without getting started but see the possibility to advance that uh to those phases of of the scope once we got started. Um, I it's not clear to me, and I'll ask Director Smith if if he concurs, that those would necessarily include the types of specific uh interventions that Council Member Cook is speaking about and that you're asking about as far as what was proposed in the budget. Um, I would say, you know, I do want to clarify that that my recommendation in this budget about beginning with the strategic plan, um, did have a financial component, but also to me had a very systemic component, which is, um, the fact that not only, uh, do I have questions about or do I feel like I don't have uh, the requisite plan to give council guidance on how to make their next investment. I also have questions about who that investment would go to and who would operate that

shelter or that non- congregate shelter uh or the day shelter. I believe there are potential people in our community who would want to bring that forward. Uh it's not clear to me that that when we received that recommendation that necessarily claim came with a clear plan for that. So the my recommendation to proceed with the strategic plan was was both financial but also systemic.

Uh and so um you know again if council directs us to apply funding towards that purpose I think we we would find a plan to move forward probably do an RFP uh and seek uh you know seek a partner to provide some of those services or look at other options to provide those services ourselves. we don't have any of that groundwork laid at this point. And so that was also uh a factor in my consideration in not recommending some of those factors knowing that I did think we had a good uh path forward on a strategic plan that could help address those questions. Does that answer most of your inquiry?

Yeah, that's that's good. Thank you. I think I'm good for now. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. Thank you, colleagues. Ryan, good to see you. Congratulations on the uh assumption of the new uh improved uh department.

Um I'm very heartened, let me say, personally, to see the commitment to um guaranteed income. Uh it's been a drum I've been beating in the city for a long time. Yes, sir. Uh so to see it codified and by the way, it it's I don't know if I'm going to be around to see the implementation in the next budget, but wherever I am, my voice will remain engaged and stay vigilant uh on it.

But it it's not this year. And I think a case could be made as strongly as the day shelter that it should be in this year given the results we saw from it. But um I'm looking at a larger context and a big picture and I I'm going to choose uh my battles. Um can I ask you a question real quick on that? Oh, absolutely. Uh I don't I don't know if I

understood you correctly. My understanding and manager Ferguson, correct me if I'm wrong, is guaranteed income is in this year, a million dollars and we're going to make it happen this year. Yeah. This coming up fiscal year that we're about to step into.

Yeah, sir. So, C council had funding in FY25 as you're aware. We worked with uh the the possibility of a of an outside agency to run that program for us. Uh we were not able to reach agreement with that agency.

We re we then uh looked at different options to deliver the program and we uh decided to bring administration of the program inhouse under the community safety department. The million dollars that council set aside for FY25 because it has not been spent. We're going to carry forward spend that money in FY26. That is one-time money and the next year's council will have a decision to make as to whether or not to continue that program. But there will be a uh program that begins in FY26 in this department

with money carried forward for FY25. So there is no new money in the budget, but there is the million dollars you allocated this year that has not yet been spent. Brilliant. That is excellent news.

Thank you so much. And my my uh one of the reasons why I had not leaned in. I know there are some some legislative machinations going on uh as well and and the environment in which we're operating obviously and I you know I wanted to choose my battles but that's very heartening to hear. My um I think council member as I recall I think the ask was to indeed codified and make it recurring.

So I hope that if that language was not approved or or applied this year that it would certainly be applied at the next budget that it would just be uh concretized in our budget moving forward. I want to uh I want to thank um my colleagues also for allowing the data to drive our decision in terms of the expansion. Um you know when when when this whole initiative was born it was born out of data. We we did a study in our 911 call center to see the amount

of calls and percentage of calls that were non uh could be diverted to something other than police. It was data driven. And I'm very pleased that I know there was a a a steady call for it just to go 24 hours, 7 days a week, period. Um but I'm I'm glad to see that the conversation is being driven uh by data.

I think we get the best results that way and I thank my colleagues for um allowing the data to drive. I have no doubt in my mind that we will get to the day when we are 24/7. That is the ultimate goal. But I'm appreciative of the deliberate um data driven move toward uh move toward that.

Finally, you know, I'll just say um with respect to uh heart, thank God we have this this program. I I personally have a family member that has interacted with members of the heart uh team. I I can't tell you how thankful I am on so many nights. Obviously, I've I've gotten calls sometimes from from from Durham police officers. I know I would not have gotten those calls if I

didn't occupy this position. But before knowing who I was or not even carrying a heart team um and Durham police officers administered uh incredibly humane and kind care uh to a family member before connecting the last name. So, I want to publicly just say how grateful I am uh that the city of Durham has this tool uh in our toolbox. I I'm glad that we've gotten past the part of the debate where some wanted to position HART as over and against the police.

There were some who actually suggested that for every HART worker we hire, we take away a police officer. Um which is not the ideal way we implement this initiative. I want to thank the police department for their embracing Chief uh Andrews in particular for her embracing and for the the relationship you two have built that have been modeled that that's been uh uh celebrated around the country. Um there is a bit of of also a bit of sadness for me because I think there are some some missed opportunities and I actually smiled when you mentioned Denver. Denver

is one of the cities um I visited um over the years when when was looking at some conversation partners for some of our initiatives. Um and when I say sadness and missed opportunity, most of our conversation partners that have these uh co-respons or these responses have it as part of a multi-layered response. It's it's a multi-dimensional many many um uh points. Denver actually was one of those cities I was impressed with because Denver in the I think their industry is called STAR if I'm not mistaken.

I think Denver's response team is called STAR. Um most of these cities or all the cities that have these type responses also have Shot Spotter. They also have wraparound services. And one of the things I was impressed with Denver is um I think it was Denver or Dallas. I I'll check but I'm pretty sure it was Denver. One of the ways they employed a response team is when the day after a shot spotter alert went out in addition to police, instead of cops going out, it was mental health and clinical workers that went to that community where

gunfire was and canvased folk. And in many ways, folk felt more comfortable speaking to those folk than the officers. Cooperation and investigation went up. And for an office of survivor care, it actually drove clients to the office because in order to, you know, use the office of survivor care, you have to be, wait for it, a survivor.

So, so, you know, um, what's interesting to me when I say lost opportunity is that we we modeled whatever Durham touches, we model. We, you know, the the the country takes note. So, folk are looking at our heart program. During our initiative with Shot Spotter, other cities started to look at the way we integrated the information.

They looked at our forward uh facing portal. They looked at some of our protocols such that the company was starting to tout us as the way if you're going to use this technology, you should use it. I say all this to say that when we talk about, you know, the discomfort or impatience with speaking to folk

about whether it's homelessness or eviction diversion, I feel that same anx when I look at a grandmother whose child jumped in the bathtub or the family members of the person whose life was saved because no one called 911, but we got there to save them. What are we doing about gun violence? And I have to say, well, we don't have uh uh Bull City United anymore. We don't have Shot Spotter anymore.

So, what have we done and what are we doing? Um we do have the heart program, but you know, one of the arguments that folk like to say is it, you know, that's reactionary. It's not root cause. Heart's not root cause. Office of Survivor Care is not it's all reactionary, but those reactions can set us up for success uh moving forward. So, I just want to say that that, you know, this is an incredibly um humane and beautiful initiative that we have in heart, but a lot of the conversation partners we look at are are

using these strategies with all of the other tools available to them to create a nexus of success, to create a an orbit uh of success and using them in creative ways. Um and in that sense I think we have missed opportunities and and the irony is is that the folk the community that pushed us for heart and put us in a position of success in many ways also has hobbled us because we'll point that to conversation partners where these things have succeeded and pretend that we don't see all of the other tools how they've used them also uh to create a nexus of success. But you know we go forward you know this the story is not over. there are new days, there'll be new people and new voices. Um, so I'm very heartened and very excited uh about the results we're seeing and about the success we're seeing. And what a wonderful thing as a government uh to be able to increase the likelihood of survivability by limiting contact with guns and badges and having the ability

uh to send humane help uh to keep people alive. That's an that's that's a great position to be in as a decision maker. Not everybody has that uh success and and and I can only pray that we will continue uh to build on it and I look forward to the day in the days coming when heart will be 247. So good luck to you.

Thank you for the incredible work you and the department are doing and uh I look forward to my bird name one day. So thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you colleagues.

Are there any other comments or questions? All right. Uh I'll just share a few real quick and uh then we'll break for lunch and come back and finish out with a working uh conclusion to the budget workshop. Um Mayor Pro Tim, you just shared a lot of what I you know I'm a little concerned with.

Um I and I don't think that comes at a surprise. Um it's amazing what we can be patient on and what we cannot be patient on. Uh we're patient when it comes to gun

violence and the kids having to duck bullets. we're not patient when it comes to this situation. With that being said, I think it's and and I want to make sure we're being brutally transparent with one another and having these conversations. Um I let me go back and just state the information I'd like to know. I don't want to I don't want to talk about this in assumptions just like I want to know who the gatekeepers are and the scorekeepers are who's having those jobs demographically. I want to know um the demographics uh and the intensity levels of uh you know the individuals that are homeless uh because to at face value and I hear this a lot it's not just the pan handlers on the street they are a big part but we have a bigger part we don't see and I want to know who these folks are uh demographically you know I know we have 62 families 111 individuals um I want to know more about the type of homelessness they have so that we're not just blanketly saying, "Hey, we need a day center or day shelter or we need to

" I don't It It sounds weird when I say I have patience. I don't have patience. I don't have patience for a lot. But I'm willing to wait until we have a strategy so that we can be responsible because that we're we're we're fidiciary respons uh we're responsible fidiciaries uh sitting on this council.

So, I do prefer a plan. Um I I there are a lot of things I want to spend money on. I don't want to spend money on a $1 million election because we having it when nobody else is having it. But we have to do that, right?

I I do want to spend funds on investing in a full apparatus of safety uh that is preventative as well as making sure that we're doing the care afterward. That is why I'm personally raising a million dollars because I can't get a lot of support on the preventative side. So therefore, I'm doing that on the on the on the care side of it. we have this entire apparatus but this is also having a limited scope you know and and I want to

make sure that we're we're fully delivering on you know the the effectiveness that's happening here so we have heart and now we have all these components around it the next phase of it is the customerf facing of it like I know that we have heart and this I felt like it really worked so it is working I want to make sure that we're communicating that better to the public that is on me that is on us that is as the the liaison to the community um showing the thousands of responses and usually it's like traffic. You know, folks when they when they have to travel somewhere and they're sitting in rush hour traffic, they think that traffic on that road is bad all the time. Um when someone has a crisis and they call 911, they think that is the situation all the time. Uh they don't see the other thousands of calls that are going through.

So, thank you for all of this information. Um, I'm I am not going to stop talking about the fact that we are responding to transportation. We

appear to have urgency around housing, but we're not doing a dang thing when it comes to gun violence. Uh, and and again, that is a very holistic and systems response. But I'm going to look at the faces around this table, the faces at the county, the faces at the school board, the faces in our sheriff's department and police department, the DA's office and the courts constantly until we can say this is what Durham is doing. And that I don't have patience for because if I'm homeless, it's going to be an uncomfortable night.

But if I'm shot, I'm dead. And for the life of me, I will never understand why that is not the number one respon we're talking about. and it's not even in the budget at all. And and so I I'll never be okay with that and I'm going to continue to talk about it.

I don't think it's a tire conversation. I think we need to figure out what we're going to do about it. Um when it comes to um I think you answered this when it comes to the $2 million that are being moved over that just to make sure that is money that's coming over with the staff

and their responsibilities. Correct. Correct. Yes.

All right. Good. Um I talked about GBI. I'm glad that we're actually, you know, we that is us been smart in getting around the uh the the AI word search that the government is trying to use and we're actually still being able to responsibly use our funds to be effective.

Um yeah, I I question. Are we partnering with Duke's patient navigation services in our office of survivor care? Hold on. Oh, sorry.

Hello. Yeah. Hi, Lee Maer. Uh, clinical manager.

We have met with them several times. So, Duke's hospital-based violence intervention team. They serve folks who are aged 14 to 40. And so, we're hoping to partner with them to work with their family members of the individuals who have been impacted because this group primarily works with just the folks who have been shot. Um,

so we're hoping to expand the ability to work with expand the ability to work with uh family members and also um folks who have just generally been impacted that may not want to work with that team. So I think they'll be a pretty large referral source for us. That that would be great. I just so we're not duplicating I mean not necessarily duplicating services but I think if we're working together we're covering more ground.

Uh, and if you run into any roadblocks there, just let me know and I I will personally get involved to make sure that relationship is ironclad. Uh, sounds good. That's that's great. Um, you know, we we are the government and we have many reasons not to trust the government and we have many reasons to rely on the government. I want to make sure that you know we as we are thinking about all of these things that we are drafting policy the reason why I'm asking the questions that I'm asking

is because I don't want to govern in assumptions. I want to know exactly who we are serving and and and how we can serve them. I don't want to say well there may be somebody XYZ and then we put a crap ton of money behind it and it's an ineffective delivery of services. So, uh, as much information as you can get us.

Um, I think that, you know, I constantly say this, I want Durham to have, you know, uh, the most progressive public safety apparatus in the nation. And that means covering both sides of a crisis to the point where the crisis doesn't exist. But I know I'm I live in reality. So, I know crisis do come about. Um, how do we prevent them as best as possible? " Like, we have to be much more realistic with the fact that that that people are literally living this on a daily basis in Durham

and they are getting younger, they are getting blacker, and we are getting muter if that's a word. And we're just not responding. Not at all. So, uh, that gets really uncomfortable.

I have no problem with uncomfortability on this. Right. So, with that being said, I'm going to break us for lunch. Yes, ma'am.

Yeah. I'm just going to add now my mic is working that I appreciate everyone's comments. I just want to state for the record that there is lots and lots and lots of data that supports the fact that people who are housing unstable or unhoused are more likely to be involved in crime. they're more likely be likely to be involved in violent crime and that their ability to get them uh resources is severely hampered.

This is a violence issue. Keeping people housed is an antiviolence tool. It's just it is statistically true

and is consistent um across the country. So, just want to just want to add that to the record. I appreciate everyone's comments. These are all things that are priorities to me.

I want to associate myself with council member Cook's comments, which is why it's in the budget and which is why we support it. I don't know one person who supports Shot Spotter that does not support everything else. Housing heart program on the other hand, you will find people who support those other initiatives who don't support shot. I don't know one person who supports Shot Spotter that does not agree with everything else we're doing because we understand that it's multifaceted and comprehensive.

So, absolutely. And you're right, the studies do show it. Um, which is why there's money in the budget for it as as well there should be. I support everything.

I've never voted against any of that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Oh, thank you. I just wanted to ask if there was something specific because I I mean I keep hearing shot spotter but I don't think that that gets us to zero gun deaths. Is there anything in spe

particular that we're missing? Has there been a strategic plan around it? Like I don't know what was proposed that we didn't support. Sure.

I don't I don't recall ever going on record saying that it would get us to zero gun death. That's a canard. I was talking to the mayor. Well, you didn't specify, but I'm sorry.

Uh I don't recall there being anything on the record that um that said we would get to zero. Uh it's another tool in the toolbox. I have asked for a public safety strategy just like a housing strategy, an economic development strategy, and a homeless strategy. I do have time to wait and get it right rather than just dumping money into something.

Um but I I I have no patience for where we are in regards of a specific request. Let me just put this on the record. I would love for us to put spot shot spider in the budget because it is a tool. I would love for us to entertain the idea as far as the strategy with cities united or some like program that is a systems response. Uh and these are things that are actually statistically working uh across the

nation. But again, as we've stated, there are two things that are killing people in this city. Cars and guns. Uh, one, we have a vision zero, which we actually put on record that we want zero deaths by car accidents.

Uh, we have a plan, we have a bond, we have a person, we have a staff. Uh, and we're investing in that. When it comes to guns, we have no nothing. Honestly, that's helpful.

I would just say just I know I said it before, I think that was possible because it came down from the federal level with the vision zero as opposed to like a vision zero for gun violence. If you want to propose, I would not mind coming up with a strategy, figuring out what you want, like what could be in that plan. Um, I supported sot spotter as a pilot because it was, you know, a good idea to at least make sure that was a tool we could use. What we got back and the information that we received, I mean, it didn't it didn't really show like the cost aligned with what we were doing for three miles. And so the you

mean the the the the lives that the three miles that it covered for the million plus dollars. I think that we can find a more um costefficient way to do it and um we could definitely have more conversations. I I'm not opposed to having tools in the toolbox. I don't think that any tools have been proposed that I would Yeah, that's that's the only thing that I'm just I just want to make sure that I'm clear like yeah, I'm supportive.

Show me what you want to do. I I noted I um totally noted. I think the fact of the matter is uh that we're going to talk about anything and that's that's all of us. Uh I'll I've I've asked the manager for strategy.

I'm suggesting things. I've been bringing folks to the uh vent crime reduction roundt. I think the most disappointing thing is we don't have the same energy and enthusiasm about gun violence which is the most immediate as we do in the other things. Is there another space other than the

violent crime reduction? Because I think to your point, you know, like provision zero, there's a number of different boards and committees that are in place that cover that if there are other spaces break for lunch. So we we are going to break for lunch, but we're going to have this conversation. Okay.

Because then I'm I'm queuing up and I wouldn't do that right now because I'm hungry. that that's fine, but I'm not going to rush this conversation. We rush we rush this conversation every single time. Are you done?

I mean, there there's the criminal justice uh the county all of the county stuff. You have the criminal justice uh reduction committee. You have the violent crime reduction roundt. you have um the the task force uh that the sheriff and the police chief does.

There there are several spaces where the conversation is being had, but there just no action. There's no actual things that we can put as a policy that hasn't come about yet. If there's anything that they're recommending that we're not

doing, that would be good to know. I mean, those are things they recommended Shot Spotter as a tool and the task force did. No, that the actual police chief I they they she and the sheriff supported it. She supported it as well.

Now, this is just a tool, colleagues. We can get uncomfortable all we want. We can get uncomfortable all we want, but we're talking about the budget right now. And it is really amazing how this conversation wants to get rushed every single time. We've had this conversation even at JCC and didn't even want to have it on the agenda. I know it is uncomfortable, but again, gun violence and these kids

getting shot in this city is literally the main thing, like the biggest thing that is the most immediate and we have talked around it every single time. I am not going to rush my comments and I'm not going to rush me responding to anyone else because we're all of a sudden having a very uncomfortable situation. I don't know about anybody else, but there are two things that I'm going to have to respond to when I leave here. What are we doing about gun violence? and what are we doing about taxes and housing and homelessness and all of those things fall under that. So like it or not, I'm not going to rush my comments.

Did you have any further questions for me? Okay, Council Member Cabiero, you and I have been real patient with everyone. Um, vision zero happened over many, many years, including from transportation staff who put things in their budget that got denied. If you want something to happen, go do the work.

Show up with a proposal, get the stakeholders together, and do the work. But please do not come and lecture your colleagues over and over and over again. It is demeaning and disrespectful. I've been on this council since 2018.

I have led coalitions from all across to get the things that I prioritized and felt important done. And everyone at this dis needs to stop and just work together even if we don't like each other. That's how you get things over. You need four votes and you need to do the background and the work.

That's how this works. That's how government works. And we're lucky there's only seven of us and not 50 alder people like in Chicago or New York. That's how this works.

And it's hard. And you have to get staff on board. And that's how you move a thing forward. And I am happy to support when somebody shows up with that, but I'm not going to do things for them.

That is if it is a priority of yours. And I think every single one of us, and I've been on three different councils, there is not a single council member who has never wanted to solve gun violence. It's gross to say that. We all understand it's a problem. Like, we all understand there's a multitude of problems in this city. So again, if you would like a proposal or help, happy to help,

but I'm not going to be lectured at and told that I don't care about something. Thank you. Um, our actions speak for themselves. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, uh, colleagues. Um, I don't think there's a member of this council that has been, um, called more names, interrupted more, lectured more than me for whatever reason. Um, I've been lectured about votes on um, zoning.

Some of us have been accused of doing harm and trying to poison people in our community. Uh, I've I've been on his council long enough to watch a colleague ask questions in a tone in which he was celebrated as brilliant and incisive and then when I do it, I'm arrogant. Same kind of tone. I won't go

into the reasons for that but uh so so I think all of us have been on the um on the receiving end of of lectures and and for students of these committee of these of these meetings you can go back and watch the tapes and decide for yourself who's been lectured more or maligned more or interrupted more or had more teeth sucking or eye rolling uh than me. Uh I hold that mantle. With that said, I I think the issue is that when folks say things that just simply aren't true, uh, for example, that Shot Spotter was touted as something to end gun violence. Never once.

No one. No one said that. So, I I think it's important that when we have the conversation, and I and I appreciate um, you know, having to do the work. I led the city's largest uh uh grassroots organization before coming on the council.

So, I understand doing the work and I understand counting to four. When I got reelected in 2021, the first thing uh Mayor O'Neal asked me to do was to reintroduce Shot Spotter. And everybody

who voted for it supported it then. Um I think what has happened uh since then is, and I'm I'm ready to admit this, has been some messenger fatigue. There are some people who are against it because Middleton's for it. That's the truth.

So, what I would suggest is don't listen to me anymore. Go talk to the family whose family member was able to celebrate Christmas because our police got to them while they were bleeding out when no one called 911. Forget me. Go talk to the people who live in some of these public housing complexes who have video cameras, which is the internationally recognized symbol of surveillance.

So, we'll spend money to get highresolution videos of your victimization to go viral the next morning, but we won't spend money to send help in real time, but we'll take pictures of it. So, forget me. Go talk to the folk who have been affected. And as I say all

the time, and I'll end here, Mr. Mayor, because I know folk are hungry or hangry. Um, you know, the once the vote is over, um, I my favorite term thing is what's next. You know, it's not personal for me.

Um, but if you're going to come back and say things that aren't true, don't get mad when you get called on it. Don't get mad when there's push back. I don't care what names you call. I really don't.

But if you're going to state things from this day that are not true, then you need to be prepared to deal with it because I will. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you all.

And and and I know this is a pretty intense conversation. Um I do appreciate all of you all as my colleagues. I really do. Seriously.

Uh and I know that, you know, we can get in uncomfortable situations. I want to acknowledge that. Uh I think that you know this obviously is personal to me uh as I have to respond to community members who have these daily lived experiences and it it is frustrating and

I'm not lecturing at anyone but I am going to always state the case that we took action to take away and we have not taken action to put anything in place and I don't mind being the one to bring the solution that we can consider. I I'm I'm already working on that, you know, but the fact that I think it is, you know, frustrating that this is something that affecting that affects everyone in our entire city and we don't say anything about it. You know, we we just don't we're not like I don't know. I I when I think about the the intensity around other issues like gosh man I wish we could you know just have that same energy on the fact that people literally are getting killed you know like lives are being taken not lives being uncomfortable and we just we aren't so I'm sorry that it comes off as a lecture to me it comes off as I'm going to hold myself publicly accountable in this platform and I have to just share the council with you

So I appreciate everything we do together. Um it is not personal that matter is personal to me but our work together is not personal. " That has never left me. I've been I remember it.

And it also prepared me that I know that some of these conversations are going to be tough. So, I respect every last one of you all. Uh, I have asked for a strategy to be put forward. I'm contributing to that strategy.

Uh, but the fact that we're about to pass an over $700 million budget and there's nothing in it that responds to it. And that's like literally the number one thing that's happening, that is just really disturbing to me. And I need to I have to state that on the record. And I don't

I'm never going to be okay with having long-term response to something that is so immediate but then on something else we need to be immediate on. So I'm just putting the consistency or need for consistency out there. So I appreciate all of you all. Um I know Mr.

Manager you wanted to make some closing comments. So let me just make sure everybody is good. Mr. Baker, I appreciate everyone's comments.

I um was born and raised in Durham and lived across from Northgate Mall and heard a lot of gunshots all the time. Uh we had um folks who uh got shot on on our street. Um folks who did shootings at the mall, ran across the street, hid in our yard, knocked on our door. um friends who died from shootings. Um walking down the street,

smelled something, called the police, there was a dead body. Um that's Durham in the '9s. I mean, it was it's it was it was brutal then. It's brutal now.

It's hard. It's something that I know I care deeply about. talk about a lot. I know all my colleagues up here care deeply about it and it is such a hard issue.

You can redesign a street and make it safer. How do you address gun violence? I mean, it is so difficult and requires so many comprehensive tools and policies. This is a tough conversation and I would I would I think we should do a strategic and comprehensive

plan that is that is aimed at gun violence. I do I think we should we should invest the time and the resources to address it head on. I think it's I think it is dishonest to message that we don't care and that nobody cares but for one thing Shot Spotter. I think that is unfair and dishonest.

We had it. There was an analysis. It was qualitative and quantitative. I know there are some complaints about how it was conducted. I wasn't around when when the decisions were made about the methodology, but we studied it. I spoke with police officers and many many others to make the very best

decision. In my view, Shot Spotter was not a good use of of resources. that there were better ways of expending resources. We spend biggest chunks of the of the general fund.

Go to the police department, go to community safety, go to nonprofits working and doing the work in our communities, go to many different programs that are of course they are not called addressing gun violence. They are called something else. I think it's dishonest to say that we don't care, that we don't think about gun violence because we reviewed the reports that were created about Shot Spotter and disagreed that it was an effective tool. I'm It's fine if you disagree with that analysis, disagree with our analysis of those reports and continue to want

Shot Spotter, but let's look at it within a more comprehensive scope and a more comprehensive framework and put it in the budget to Council Member Cavayar's point and let's tackle it in a comprehensive Okay, as I think that we already are, but if we need to revisit that and actually develop a more strategic analysis and strategic approach, we should we should do that and I would support it. So, I have Thank you. And I was just going to say mainly thank you. Um I know uh there's always some contention and I understand your you know your angst.

There's there's no tension around this. I mean, these are the things we have conversations about. This is why we're having a conversation. This is the budget. And I think I what I'm most um troubled by is that we link it causally like as if black

children are creating gun violence. And that troubles me a lot because I want to be clear that white violence is always louder and the white violence is usually poverty and the poverty that these children live in. And when we don't attack poverty and we focus on the gun violence like it's the children's fault, it makes it as if they are the re they're the problem. They are not the problem.

We are. And we have to come up with a more comprehensive way to look at how we address poverty, not gun violence. And that's my trouble with the conversation because Shot Spot is not the solution. Addressing poverty is the solution.

That can be a tool. It could be a tool, but the way that it was implemented without the NYN like operating like if there's no followup on those bullets, like we're just dumping a whole bunch of data into the black hole, which doesn't actually solve the problem and it doesn't actually address the issue. And so I want to be really clear like I have no interest in supporting Shot Spotter because it's not the priority for me. The priority is making

sure that these children have someplace to live, some food in their bellies, and actual warm cover to like the there are so many other priorities that I have for children in our community knowing that they are ages 9, 10, 11, and 12 shooting at each other. There's a there's a a distinct level of inhumity that you have to reach in order to pull the trigger on someone who looks like you. And so that's what my push back is always going to be around the way you frame the conversation. These children are not the problem.

I don't need to attack them. So if we want to come up with a solution, a strategy addressing, you know, some of these issues that our families are facing, that's different and I'm all for that. It looks like having those committees in place. It looks like doing the work that Javiera Caballero mentioned.

And that I don't think comes from staff. It comes from us. And if you want to make space in a work session or if you want to make space on a Saturday,

it doesn't matter to me. I think the previous mayor tried to do that. That's why Hyorn came forward with the justice movement and that's why they provided peer-to-peer supports and they were trying to get that going. Durham New Vision, all of those folks were formerly justice involved folks who who were providing solutions to the issue that they saw in the streets.

There wasn't support for that. So, I just want to make sure that we we keep the framework of this in in line. I don't and I want to be really clear like the reason I'm saying vision zero for gun violence is has nothing to do with Shot Spotter. It's really like based on the com comments you've been making.

You're trying to say it, but you're not saying it. We have to address the family's critical needs in order for children not to not to be on the street shooting each other. I No, I appreciate that. And thank you also, Council Member Baker. Um I and I too, Shot Spotter just happened to be the thing that we did have in front of us to make a decision on. Let me be very

clear. This is not totally about Shot Spotter. So I'll say that very clear. This is not a debate of for or against Shot Spotter.

So thank you all for that. But we can say all of what we want to say. when we leave here and people look into this budget, that is what they're going to hear. And that is my overall issue.

They're not going to be able to read that response and and and what we have. We they're going to read some renditions of it. They're going to see some of it, but I don't mind putting something together for us to s, you know, consider. And no, I don't think that any of you all don't care about gun violence either.

But when it comes to gun violence and we look at the data and it does show our hard data here, no, it's not the kids faults. Trust me, I know that more than anybody or most. But when we look at the data and we as a in a matter of fact, when you look at what you actually see and you

name that what it is, I'm I'm not going to read a dissertation of why this is what it is. I'm saying this is what I see. And when I verbalize that, there is a lot to it, you know. So I I agree with you, but please don't reduce my comments down to shop spider.

That that was just one thing we had in front of us. Just like the county had bull city united for for our guests, however people think about it, just like the budgets for the only spaces that we currently have that's supposed to do this convening work. My brother's keeper in the office of community intervention, you know. So it is a big conversation.

I don't know why we are having it. You know, we talk about everything else but we don't have it. So I will always share my frustration. I respect each of you all way too much.

To think that you're bad people. To think that you only care about shot spot. That is not my point. And if that if it's coming off that way, I publicly apologize about that.

But when I can hear us talk about all these other things and then the most immediate I don't hear a lot of conversation about that is what I'm talking about. That is where my frustration is rooted. And I will anytime I get an opportunity to I will say that that doesn't it does I would I respect you all too much to attack your character. That's just not my my emmo.

Okay. Council member Riss, did you have one more because the boat needs to close us out. He's gonna but and Bo's going to be the last comment. So, uh, yeah, a lot going on.

So, you know, um, one of my real heroes is the guy used to be a law professor at Temple and later was a vice president at the Chelsea Cook Foundation. In my old life, he Chelsea Cook Foundation would convene people and run different policy conversations. And one of his tools when he convened us was say like, but these are like two-day convenings. And when we sat down, he'd say like, "All right, the first thing I want you to say is the one thing you wanted to say when you came to this meeting, regardless of whether it's on topic or not, because I know that at

" So, what I feel like is going on here is that there's frustration about this issue of violence and gunshots and murders, right? And then I feel like these comments come out because people are frustrated about this, but we haven't had there's clearly not been a way that we've had to talk about this issue outside of the or in any way that we can really get to the heart of the matter. And so, Mr. Mayor, you're so right.

The issue of gunshots and homicides and gun violence is like is is terrible. It's awful in Durham, right? Um but it's also true that all of us in the council care deeply about that. to to suggest we don't care about that is real.

It is hurtful to feel like you like we don't care about that. We all care about that. We had differences of opinion about Shot Spotter. As you said, it's not just about Shot Spotter, but as Council Member Baker said, we also have a police department is the largest part of our general fund. We spent a lot of money on the police department and on public

safety, community safety. So, it's not like we're not spending money, but clearly we're not getting at the heart of this matter somehow. That's that's sort of like and I know that when when there's a homicide victim, you're there and and you've got to you you show up and you face that family that's lost a loved one and that's awful, you know. So, I fully support Council Freeman and others saying if we need to have a conversation about this or some kind of strategic effort, whatever it is, let's do it.

But I it is true that this this topic keeps coming up at odd times and I don't think it's a productive conversation. So, we got to figure out a way to have a productive conversation about this. Yeah. And again, I don't think that you all don't care.

And if it's coming off that way through my frustration, I publicly apologize about that. I don't think you're bad people. And I'm addressing us as a council and how we're responding to it. So, thanks for clearing that up.

Mr. Ferguson, you'll have the last comment and then DDI will finally get to you. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate all the comments. I um it's incumbent on staff not to be out

in front of council on policy setting and and I think we it's our job to try and respond to the council when the council council has directives when you've asked for research when you've asked for a plan forward. Uh I think the reason you have a a homeless services strategy uh that that Ryan just covered is in part because we're a designated lead agency. we are the the community has designated the city of Durham to lead that conversation. So I felt like we had some cover in that space to bring forward a strategy.

Uh I believe the the issue of violence intervention is a shared responsibility. I know as you mentioned the the county has a community intervention and support services department. Um, and so I think there's been less clear direction to staff uh to to work aggressively in the space of bringing policy before council. Uh, based on today's conversation, I'd like you to feel comfortable asking staff to at least convene a working session for the council, bring forward what research

we have. I'd very much like that to be a collaborative effort with our friends at the county who I do think uh have very strong work in this space and who I know we have very collaborative relationships with. uh this council could consider that certainly comfortably comfortably covered in the existing budget proposal you have in front of you. Uh and we'd be happy to to do some work behind the scenes and work with uh work with all of you to frame out a conversation where you could have uh a review of best practices across the country when it comes to uh violence intervention and violence response.

Uh if that is something that the council would like for the staff to pursue in a work plan and bring back to the council for further conversation, I'm happy to offer that. Yes, please. Can I ask colleagues? Yeah. Um on that, I would love because there was a joint city county schools community safety task force that had a multiund page report including a wonderful appendix that tells what they heard from community and who should fund it and where it lives. So, if we can

just make sure we have that data point, if we can make sure we have all of the meetings that happen around violence in this city, because there's a lot of them, like I think that that's part of it is that there's 50 things happening and there's not a central location. And so I I hear frustration around vision zero. And I there that community over many years has done a lot of work to work collaboratively. And so if we want that better outcomes that is in you know that then we have to ask act like a convenor.

And honestly the power of the mayor is the power of convening. And so, um, I I think that if staff's going to take us down that path, and I appreciate that, manager Ferguson, I would like a real deep understanding of what is the ecosystem out there. Thank you. Thank you.

With that being said, all right, let's go to lunch. Uh, let's take uh let's just get our food and come back in. And um we we uh well, no, we might have some questions.

I might ask you why aren't you putting shot spotter in the DDR budget? All right. First day, you know, wasn't sure. Right.

What was happening? So, it's one of three things. These cables or it's simply these mics do not like being plugged in all the time or it is the third thing. It's there are two things and two of them are both linked. So, could be the cable or it could be plugged in all the way.

So, we'll see. The vendor is looking into it and uh they're going to troubleshoot it and we're going to look into uh

Could I just check that mic back Anyway, forward All right. U welcome back everyone. Uh thank you for your patience and um thank you all for such a rich dialogue. Um I was talking to some of you all outside of here. I'm like so grateful that we have the minds around this table uh and just just that we can have a rich policy conversation

uh get really angry and frustrated and then all right let's go eat together. So uh thank you guys for that. All right um going to pass it over to uh the next presentation which is with CEO of the Downtown Durham Incorporated Nicole Thompson. Uh good um good afternoon.

Um glad you all are eating because I decided that I'll now just take a couple of hours and tell you all the great things that are happening in downtown. So um let's get ready for I don't know, maybe we can go until dinner if y'all are good for that. Uh because there's a lot happening. Um I was told to keep this to 30 minutes, so I will do my best to keep it to 20 and give you all 10 minutes of Q&A.

Um okay. Going to go through a little bit of uh um I'm laying I'm laying out good priorities. My name is Nicole Thompson. I'm the president CEO of Downtown Durham Incorporated. Um I'm here to give you an update of the things that we accomplished very quickly in 2025, fiscal year 2025, understanding that we still have a another quarter left. Um and then also talk a little bit

about our budget or a lot about our budget request. Um this is a picture of our uh new ambassador team with our new trucks. Um in early January we started working with uh block byb block um and we now have about 13 individuals that are keeping our downtowns clean and safe uh with the truck. We got rewrapped our truck and then we also got uh two gym truck uh uh carts to get around downtown as well as as I think many of you know the bull ride.

We'll talk a bit more about that. Uh this is our mission. Um hasn't changed in the last 20 30 years that we have been in existence. Um, our vision is still to u make downtown a diverse, unique, and thriving heart of Durham and to be welcoming to all.

Our goals remain clean and safe, economic development, placekeeping, and marketing. Um, all four of those goals are paid for using bid funds. Uh, our organization, we currently have a 25 member board. Uh, there are seven of us on the DDI team and we have 14 DDI ambassadors. That is one lead uh one one

uh supervis one lead and then two uh supervisors. Uh this is our bid map just to remind everybody. Um it goes from just shy of east campus to the golden belt. Uh it does not cross uh 147 and it goes just beyond the old ball field as we like to call it.

It is the bird of economic prosperity. So there you go. Um this boundary has been in place since the creation of the business improvement district in uh 2012. 8 million square feet of office.

We did not see any new office developments come online. Um nor do we have any coming out of the ground. Um we spoke to this at our state of downtown Durham event in April. Um and shared a bit about this um and how we're addressing this through the state of uh through the uh blueprint.

Uh we have a total of 6,000 units, just over 6,000 residential units. We had oh man, I can't remember how many came online. And I know 51 of them were um affordable housing at the Ashton place um which I think you all were a

part of that that um that expansion. 7 million visits to the major attractions. Uh those are the 10 um city and county owned attractions in the downtown area. And then I'll end that we had 287 or we have 287 shops, restaurants, bars, and service businesses in the downtown area.

We had 50 that opened in 2024. Uh, and we've had nine that have opened since the start of this year and a number of others that are in the process. Um, here are our accomplishments. Um, I won't read them.

I think you all received these in advance. Um, if you have questions, we're happy to answer them, but you know, the these are the accomplishments um of 2025 for our clean and safe team. Uh, placekeeping. Uh, we had an individual that was leading these efforts.

Uh, he left us um late last year. Uh, we continue to do third Fridays. Um, I invite you to come to CCB Plaza on any third Friday where we are active activating third Friday and then trying to encourage people to go out

throughout downtown and visit our galleries. Uh, we do check in with them monthly or every other month just to make sure that things are going well. And we continue working with the city to do the holiday lighting um at CCB Plaza um end of November 1st of December. Um, economic development.

I'm sorry this got a little wonky during transition. Um, one thing I will highlight, oops, shouldn't have done that. There we go. Um, one thing I will highlight is the 307 West Main Street Retail Incubator.

Um, we uh back in 2022 moved to a new location um on Main Street, West Main Street. We had been for many years above the parlor, but we outgrew that space and working with our partner self-help, we moved into a new location. We were very adamant that the front part of that needed to be converted into retail space um and they were amanable to it. So we closed off a small 350 foot space um and we use that as a small incubator. Um since the start

of that program we have had three I believe um entrepreneurs um that is it is set aside for small minority andor womenowned businesses. Uh it started with uh hometown apparel to give them an idea of if there was foot traffic uh to expand to a second location. You may know that Hometown Apparel is on 9inth Street. Um they then closed and we had um another individual in there help me.

Bath to the back to the South Bling who um created uh things using it was very intricate uh things that were blingy with um gemstones and things like that. Um and then after that we had an individual come in and open up Diana makes. Um and she has done quite well. Uh and um she has now left that space after work. We worked with her over a year so that she could get a good um feel for the trends in downtown foot traffic in downtown. She has done quite well and we were able to assist her to move into a larger location which

she opened last third Friday last um in in um May. uh called Fair and Fate Bat uh Fate and um folklore on um Market Street. I'm doing very well in that new location um and is very happy with the uh assistance that we were able to provide her as well as her business counseling um through Echo and other resources. So that is something that we were very intentional.

Um we are looking to grow that which I will share in the future. Um but that's one thing I do want to call out that took some time. It is not easy to do an incubation and to be intentional about that incubation. It does take time um to identify the individual to work closely with the individual and find that those opportunities.

Um but we are fortunate that we have quite a few partners that are willing to talk with us when we are trying to relocate or place small businesses in the downtown area. Um some of the marketing things we're doing u we continue to do our merchant map. It is print and now also

interactive online which was a big success. Uh we continue to do marketing through third Friday. One of the things that we're doing to try to engage the growing number of residents, we figure that we have about 10,000 that live in adjacent to downtown is something called it's your neighborhood. We send out a weekly newsletter, a a weekly email letting them know of highlights that businesses are doing.

If you're in the 01 um zip code, then you can go into a number of businesses in the downtown area, show that you're you live in the 01 zip code, and then get discounts. Um but uh we also are trying to bring the the the downtown to those neighbors. So we send out this weekly uh e e newsletter um letting them know about events that they need to be aware of. Um and trying to really work on bringing these individuals into downtown and understanding what's in downtown.

Um we are actually looking at expanding that and revamping that. So probably next year when I come to you, we'll have a revamped it's your neighborhood program. um advocacy um parking of course we

continue to to consider and and think about outdoor dining. Um we continue to work on transit and commuter things. There are a number of plans around transit around commuter around um vehicular traffic in and around downtown and we're involved with that and we are also working very closely with aggressive pan handling and the unhoused in the downtown area. I will stop here under advocacy and say that it was indeed encouraging and exciting to hear that um development services and inspections and reviews are now under one um one department.

Um as you may recall, we came to you in May of 2024. Um, and that was one of the things that we really wanted to see where that we could work on trying to streamline development um, permits and reviews because the longer sidewalks and streets are closed, the greater impact they have on downtown businesses. Um, and we encourage this process to happen in any densed area, not just downtown. But we really want to support getting streets, getting sidewalks back open so that people don't look down a street and go, "Oh, that must be closed. Look at all

" And don't go. Um, so a a great shout out to to that reorganization and we are very supportive and look forward to working with Sarah and her team on that around aggressive pan handling and unhoused. We are also very excited about things that are coming under Ryan's uh great leadership. Um, we work very closely um with them.

the ambassador team. Um Kenya Venezuela on our team works very closely with um the heart team around the unhoused and around the um um individuals who find themselves lacking resources in the downtown area and um seeing that that and the homeless services come together under one unit really encourages us and we continue to look forward to working with them. Um here are just some pictures because what's a presentation without pictures? Um and everybody likes to see the bull ride.

So everyone is now excited because they've seen the bull ride. I hope you all have ridden the bull ride. If not, shame on you. Um, it was down for a little bit, so if you tried for for a little bit, we we were having a little technical issue, but it's back out there. You can hail it by throwing up the bull signs or just waving and

stopping them. Um, it is indeed a treat. We have over 800 um rides so far. Um, we are already overcapacitated.

Is that a word? Um, we're going to go with it. Um, I made it up. Give it to me.

Um we are thinking about and considering how do we bring on a second one. We already have people asking us if they can rent it. Um we are not capable of doing that quite yet but but we are considering that. Um but this does run Thursday, Friday and Saturday into the evening.

Um and it does does move about the downtown area. During third Friday, we tried desperately to use it to get people from the center of downtown to Golden Belt where we hear we have over 30 artists who say that they are there. They don't feel really a part of the third Friday. So, we're really trying to move people to the farthest reaches of of our district.

Um, this does not go out of the bid. So, we do market on some of our materials, all of the things in and around downtown that are in part of Third Friday. This because it is paid 100% with bid funds does not go out of the bid. Um, and then here's just a picture of one of our ambassadors um

giving someone some directions, but really we shared this because of the cute dog and we thought you would like it and it would make you feel good as we're talking to you about our budget request. um driving equitable economic growth. Um this is something that we do. We live and we breathe it.

We are still continuing to do the um the bullpen. Um we're working on how we might revamp that a little bit and be out there a little bit more. We're experimenting with ways to let people know that they're in the bullpen um by doing things on the sidewalk um and just just trying to really push this. I'm working with our businesses to uh do a shout out.

And this is a picture of 307 West Maine. And you can see the activity that she had. She was very creative. Diana was very creative and and really would come out onto the sidewalk whenever she had an opportunity.

She was involved with Centerfest. She was able to come out during Centerfest. Um so this, as I mentioned, has now moved onto uh Market Street. Um downtown initiatives.

This is a picture of it neighborhood. We had kind of a little party for the residents of One City Center. We were able to uh partner with the property management

group and they hosted us on their patio. Um, and we brought some businesses in so that people who may not leave or when they leave their their their residents, they take the elevator to their car and then they drive out of downtown. We tried to bring downtown to them. We're exploring if this can continue.

We don't know that it had a huge huge impact, but it had a it had a slight um impact. So, we're considering what this might look like going forward. I will say that we also have a resident council that we work with to try to help us understand better the needs and the wants and the desires of um the residents of downtown and that is comprised of um homeowners as well as renters. Um we are looking to revamp that committee as well so there is more diversity in age, gender um age, gender and race.

Um we continue to do feast. This is something that started a couple of years ago uh where it's very slow in downtown during the winter months. Uh so we try to get people to come out and visit uh restaurants, submit their receipts, and then we do a drawing every week for four weeks, and then we work with the retail businesses and buy things and give out boxes, uh

gift boxes. Um so this individual ate at um Sweets by Shada. Um this is a basket that we put together. We actually buy the things from the retail stores.

We do not ask them to donate. And we also throw in a $100 spendable, which is our ecard, which I'm happy to say is now digital. That was a problem that we were having that you had to have a seat sheet of paper, but it is now you can download it onto your wallet, your e-wallet. Um, and then we also have hotels throw in a nightstay in a hotel.

So, it's a great great thing and it's getting traction. Uh, we are still playing around with with the dates, but it's always in the winter. Uh, building uh downtown's vibrant culture. Uh, these are just some pictures of some of the things that we have done over the last year.

Of course, you recognize the holiday lighting. Everyone needs to come and take their picture in front of the only live tree in the triangle. Still going strong. We're very proud of that.

Um and we're very appreciative working with the city. The city actually goes and identifies the tree. They have the tree brought in. They drop the tree. We decorate it with lights and then the city will take the tree back. They mulch it up and then it

continues to live throughout Durham um and and serve another purpose. The picture in the bottom left corner is um our celebration of Major the Bull's 21st birthday. Um it was a great night. Um it was really was amazing to see just the diversity of people that came out to celebrate uh Major the Bull.

Um a wonderful night and then the picture on the top is uh of Third Friday working with Discover Durham in their visitor center. A picture that is not on here but something that we were able to complete working with Google. Um we have installed six seven um Wi-Fi benches. You may have seen them around downtown.

Uh we have a few at um Central Park. They are all on public land. Um we thought that would be easier. So we um worked with the with the city.

Um so we have three, correct me if I'm wrong, in the back. Um Heather, I think we have three at CC um Durham Central Park. We have one at CCB Plaza. six. Um, so and two at, as as Heather

said, and two at Black Wall Street Garden. Uh, we're working to wrap that so people know that they're there, but they're getting quite a bit of use. Um, and it it serves a 350 radius, so it's not huge, but it is something and people are using them. So, we're very excited to see that.

How will we how will we know when we see them? Like, are they are they branded somehow or not? We are working to brand them. They're not right now, but it's a it's a bench with a black pole and we should have had a picture.

we can send you a picture of what they look like, but we are working to brand them so that people would know and we're exploring how we might be able to expand this in other areas. Um, so a lot of our work last year was around the downtown Durham blueprint. Um, you may have heard about this little thing that we were doing. Um, we didn't want to be left out of the fun of doing a plan, so we jumped in and we did a plan, too.

Kind of joking. We have done a master plan for downtown since 2000. Um, we were actually basing much much of our work on that plan. We did two updates, one in 2006 and another in 2017. I think we all know that things changed with COVID and it significantly

impacted downtown. The blue the the master plan that we had really was all about how do we get more people downtown and I think we can all say that that we accomplished that. Um so this blueprint um is looking at what do we do for the next 10 years. It is a very short time frame because as we have seen things can change change dramatically in a matter of months.

So we have done quite a bit of engagement. These are just some of the pictures of the engagement that we did. We worked with a group out of Philadelphia. Went through an RFP process and selected a group out of Philadelphia interface studios.

Um if you have been to either of our two last state of downtown Durham events, you would have seen them. Scott Paige was at both of those as a keynote speaker. Um we reached 2,200 people um through surveys um through non-popup events. Um they were at a variety of places both in and outside of downtown. Um, we had some Spanish speaking events um at um the Latino Credit Union and a grocery store um off of Annel Road. We had 600 participants at um our state of downtown

Durham events where we got additional information. And then we had over a hundred stakeholder interviews. If I go back here, apparently I'm not. Oh, there we go.

Um, in the bottom right corner, no, left corner, uh, we had an event working with Motoco, um, um, Black Voices of the Future, um, to really drive into what African-American individuals would like to see in the downtown area. Um, so from this, now we're getting into the good stuff. This is our blueprint 2035. We have released the quick guide.

How much time do I have left? Okay, I love that. Someone said as much as I need. Um the blueprint 2035 we have released a quick guide.

It includes the um oh let me go back. It includes the goals. So it's very high um it's a very high um arching document. Uh we are still working on some of the uh details. There are things that are happening in downtown as we speak. Um and we are waiting for those announcements to happen to then come out with how we are

going to work with those changes in downtown in this blueprint. So, we're we're um holding back a little bit, but but we should have something released by this uh late this summer. Our plan is to bring the full document to you and to the county for full adoption. So, we will go into a deeper dive on this, but I do want to because a lot of what we're requesting from our budget is coming from the blueprint.

Um through all of our uh engagement, we've had three common category uh three common um themes. Um people wanted downtown to be safe and welcoming. They wanted to keep Durham Durham and they wanted it to be vibrant and growth oriented. Um, so from that, this is our vision for downtown.

Um, these are our seven goals. Um, I won't read them. Um, but they there they are. Um, I can go through them in more detail if you'd like, but I know I'm running out of time and you all want to know how we are going to spend money. So, this is our fiscal year 26 municipal service district budget. Uh this does not include the economic development

budget that uh we received from the city nor and it does not include the county economic development contract. Um this shows you what was approved for last year, what we're proposing for this year and the difference and I will go into detail about the difference. Um first for for economic development and marketing the blueprint recommends preserving affordable spaces for ground ground flooror small businesses while working to address gaps. How we proposed to do that is as I mentioned we had a retail incubator.

Um it was a very small space could only accommodate one person. Um through our efforts we were able to move that individual into a larger space. Um so that that she is actually doing and she's doing quite well. We would like to take that plan and move and do a larger retail incubator in the downtown area.

We are talking with a partner who might be able to accommodate this on a street that that would make sense for such a thing. So, we understand that we have gaps in our retail. Um, so this would be kind of in a in a similar in an area that is surrounded by retail to continue that

walking traffic. Uh, we are looking at um, and I've broken the budget out um, space design and buildout. Uh, so that there would be multiple booths. We're looking at three, possibly four booth space, but we're also talking with somebody who was kind of helping us design process that we may be able to include more by just having space for folks to put um, a kiosk or something.

So we may be able to fit even more into the area. Um rent offset so that we can keep the cost down for the entrepreneur. These are individuals that have more than an idea. They are actually do in business doing things.

Um so so we're looking for someone who can afford a rent. Um but um aren't quite ready to be in their own brick and mortar. So the rent offset will help them keep the rent down low as they are looking at how it work how what it means to be in downtown. Uh we understand that operating a business in downtown is very different than being at a strip mall or a mall where you don't have parking where you are relying on on walking traffic and it's very important how you market and your display. We're also

looking at a part-time manager for this space. this cannot operate by itself and we don't have the capacity on our team in order to do it right to do the marketing to ensure that the individuals are receiving the assistance that they need um and then just running the overall organization activating the space when needed. Um the second thing that we're doing the blueprint recommended a community land trust. is working with a partner to identify buildings in the downtown area and property owners who might be willing to work with us and transition their property to us so that we could keep older buildings in the in the in in in an inventory and offered to small businesses versus them being sold to a private developer being torn down and something being built on on instead.

Um, this is $10,000 to begin looking at what that could look like, who we might be able to partner with, how we would structure such a thing, a commercial land trust. It's something very new and very different. Um, so this is $10,000

to really dive into what does this look like for downtown Durham. The final thing is a retail recruitment and attraction. This is quite a bit of money. Um, however, it is something that we desperately need.

We are missing retail. We hear this quite a bit. The retail that we have is not um connected. We have it kind of scattered.

we would be working with a consultant that would come in and kind of help us with what that retail plan would look like, identify spaces, identify what things we would need to do to support um retail. I will say that this retail would not just be small and local. It is now we are now looking at how we might be able to bring in niche um regional and perhaps national retail in order to be a draw. We are missing our office workers in downtown.

So, no longer can we just rely on office workers who come and work in downtown from 8:00 to 5:00, who come in at 9:00, go grab coffee with their team, go out for lunch, um, stay a little later and do a happy hour. I know happy hours are not legal, but you know what I mean. None of those things are quite happening in downtown. They're one-offs.

Now, we also know that employees when they employers when they bring their employees in, they're keeping them in because they're trying to build back their team and the collaboration between their team. So, they're bringing food in. So, we're missing a lot of what we what we had happening in 2019. So, we are trying to create destinations and reasons for people to want to be downtown.

And we understand to do that. And to support our small businesses, we need things that people see and understand and go, "Oh, that's cool. I'm going to go to that store. Oh, look, there's Coco Cinema.

" They're doing it anyway. We know they're getting in their cars. We know they're going to places to buy their toilet paper and paper towels and Kleenexes. if they could do that, excuse me, in downtown that would help support our businesses.

So, so that is what that's getting at. Um, and about $30,000 for ret uh recruitment and attraction. It is a process identifying and then actively going out finding businesses that meet our goals and meet the things that we want to see in downtown and actively going and sitting down with them and selling them on why Durham is important and why we feel that there's a

connection. There's also marketing tied up into that. having an actual marketing packet that is presented in a way that we are actively recruiting retail into the downtown area. Um final uh no this is not final placekeeping special projects.

We're asking for 40,000. We know that there is a plan out there for parks. Um we're very excited about what's going to be happening with the Durham um um Durham Central Park. Very excited to support um planning and the city and Aaron in those efforts.

I'm looking forward to how we might be able to partner with that. We're very excited about where things are with the old historic um ballpark. We also know that there are a number of alleys that exist in our downtown area that with just a little bit of work, some lighting, some intentionality around landscaping, some planners, some chairs, we could convert some of these spaces into wonderful little places. If we could also provide an ability to plug in people can engage them, people can activate them. If we create the spaces, people because that's what Durham is, they will see the

spaces, they'll show up with their band, they'll show up with their guitar, they'll show up with their people, and they will activate the space. So, this is looking at alleys, this is looking at parkletits, and this is looking at sidewalks and what we can do to create these wonderful spaces that people want to be in. And finally, information kiosk. Um, these are ways to have the DDI team and the ambassador team out giving out information um during events, um, busy times of the day or the night.

um an actual booth with maps and water and things like that to give out to visitors and also to provide directions. Um the final thing I believe is our um clean and safe. So you all have probably seen the the new and revamped clean and safe team, our ambassador team on the street. We have transition to the purple.

Um I am looking for a purple jacket. So if you see one, let me know. I can't find one. Um but that is our color with this funding. Um this we are asking for 327,000 that is to ensure that we can provide the 11 existing FTEEs um um a

livable wage which is you all know that 22 210 um but also to bring on um and we have done that we have done that every year when you all increase your livable wage we we are ensure that we pay the ambassadors the livable wage. Um we are also asking for an additional 250 plus to bring on four new ambassadors who would be strictly um safety ambassadors. They would be in downtown at very strategic um times. They would work very closely with the police department and the heart team um identifying and providing assistance.

Um but their focus would be downtown. They would not be focused of course all of the city. They'd be very focused downtown and we would have direct communication so that we could provide services to those individuals that are in need of services in the evening, but then also being able to identify very very aggressive pan handling um and individuals who are doing things that are um making our downtowns feel unsafe. Again, reminding you that what we heard during our public

input was that people wanted downtown to be safe and welcoming. Um they would be unarmed. um they would just be working in and providing um eyes on the street so to speak. Also, we're looking at a new location because we have outgrown our location where we currently are um and the team actually needs a nice comfortable break room.

So, this would be allow would allow us to expand that and if fortunate and we can find a street level position having having a nice entryway coming into our space. I believe that is it. I hope I stayed under 30 but I doubt I did. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. Um, it's a lot of information, lots of moving parts. Uh, I'm still stuck on the, uh, the bull ride. It's just a cool I think it has a bigger impact than what even you all think it does.

Like it's like a new vibe for downtown. So, um, I'm I'm cool if we get more of those, but I'll pass it over here to I will share that. That was um an idea from Kenny who said we should

have a golf cart and put some horns on it and I was like what? But so um I do want to do a shout out to the team. Um the majority of the team are here and they come up with some of the most amazing ideas. I just get to share the things that they would like to do.

Um but they are all here um and have um been dedicated uh to the work that we do in downtown. So cool. Um, I actually think that you answered almost all of my questions. I just I know it was amazing actually just to check through all of them.

Um, I will if you want to come back and lead and lead all the things just if you read my mind. Um, no, I I was going to say that I I have stumbled upon the Wi-Fi twice now. Totally by accident. Did not know that it existed.

" first one in Central Park and I think the second one was in the garden and um and anyway then I was like do we have Wi-Fi everywhere? We do not. But um that was very cool. So I love that. I think

it's super super awesome for so many reasons. Um and I was going to ask you about the pay of the ambassadors. You went over that. You said that there were 11 full-time ambassadors, but right now you have 13.

So there's a couple part we're carrying a few more. We're carrying a few more as we transition. So, so we're we're carrying a few more working with our provider block by block. What do you mean you're carrying them?

So, when we transitioned, um, we we hired more than what we needed. Okay. So that we could find the team that really jilled. So, we we we we had quite a few more than that.

Um, we're now getting to that that the team that actually will will probably remain in place. Okay. But everyone that works everyone that works is getting is full-time and getting a livable wage. Yes.

Cool. Um, and then you're gonna bring the blueprint forward to us when it's done and make specific asset that time. So, I will bring it forward um and go into a lot of detail um in 30 minutes and we'll then ask that you all adopt

the plan. Um, there won't be any ask, but it will be the document that will drive what we do for the next 10 years. Um, and we have pulled some stuff out. So when I come and do this next year, we will again refer to things coming out of the blueprint.

Cool. Um yeah, I mean I and all the I think you said this at the beginning, but all the numbers that you gave us, that's all coming out of the bid. Yes. And um yeah, I guess I I am just like vaguely curious and this might be a Christina question.

Sorry that you've had to get up a million times, but just like that money runs through the city. Um what what if any like interaction is there in terms of like obviously we're hearing from DDI about what the uses are going to be but do we have to do anything? Does it go directly there? I just don't know the rules around bid money as well.

Sure. Christina Rearen budget and management services. Um so

the bid money is actually um tax money that so there's the bid fund um and then DDI has a contract at the um a portion of the contract that they have comes from the bid fund and that contract is um administered by our office of um economic and workforce development. And so um that contract for next year actually will be coming on your next work session or and and your next council meeting for you to approve for the following year. Okay. And is there money in addition to the bid that goes into that contract?

There is. There is an um econ economic development piece of the contract, the full contract with DDI that is not bid. That is general fund money. Okay.

Thank you. And then um is Oh, those are all my questions. Okay. Thank you.

Those are all my questions. Thank you so much. Great presentation. Appreciate it.

And I love the ambassadors. They are great. Council member Baker. Thank you. Thank you for being here, Nicole. Um, downtown Durham is such a special place for for everyone who lives in Durham,

everyone who lives in the region. And it's because it's our civic heart and our cultural heart and our economic heart. Um, all of our buses run through downtown Durham. Um, but it's also because of the urban design of our downtown.

It's walkable. It's one of the only walkable places in our whole city. Small blocks. Um, the buildings are beautiful.

uh the streetscapes, the public spaces, the plazas, the parks, all of it comes together to create something that is mixed use, compact, and walkable. And um that combined with the the placemaking and the work that you do um makes downtown Durham this special place that we all love. And everyone comes to downtown Durham. Everyone goes to downtown Durham.

So, we'll be hiring some ambassadors. You You sound like you might. So um my my first question is the blueprint 2035 beautiful plan amazingly

well done. Um it's a small area plan. Um so my my question is what's the timeline for it to come to us for adoption because I I I want us I want us to adopt it. It will come probably after your break.

Um, as I mentioned, there are a couple of things happening in the downtown area that haven't been announced. So, we are waiting for those things to be announced to then come in behind with recommendations. Um, that's a vague way of saying things are going to happen. Um, and and we're just trying to be sensitive to those things because they they play they play heavily into pieces of the um plan.

So we we believe that by late July, early August, those things would have been announced um and then we can come with our plan and be able to talk very fully about the plan. Um we would bring it to you to work session. Um most likely would have our consultant here as well um to answer any specific

questions. Um we've teased at the state of downtown event. We've kind of teased so you have a general idea, but we would get into some of the specifics um at that time. would ask for you to adopt it.

We will do the same thing with the county and we have done that with all of our plans. We did it with the 2000 plan and then each of the updates while we asked the city and the county to adopt. Okay. So, we're thinking August, September.

Okay. Early early fall or late summer, early fall for coming back to us for for adoption. That's great. And and I and the reason for that little bit of delay is that we probably will do a another public meeting um similar to what we did um at Pickleback where we just invited people to come and kind of hear.

So we will we will most likely do something like that and just invite the community to come in and hear the final plan. They had an opportunity to come and hear the thinking and to do the post-edited notes and yeah that's great and what about this will be from from all that we've heard presenting it information and then we will bring it to you. Cool. So, the timing of that will will determine.

Cool. Um, that's great. I also I want us to continue thinking about this the downtown loop reconfiguration specifically right behind city hall and between city hall and the library where we have the on-ramps and it's kind of a lot of wasted space. And the plan calls for creation of an entire new city block. Um, and not only would that create new real estate that can provide payoffs and space and whatever we wanted to to do with it, but also um reconnects um one of the great features of downtown, which is the downtown public library to the rest of downtown. And that would be such a transformative change in downtown Durham that would also provide payoffs that could coincide also with we're already putting over a million dollars into uh Mangum Roxboro and making sure that those all those projects are are aligned so that we're not doing one project and then saying ah shoot now we have to change it and go back and fix

it. Um, so I just want us to make sure that we have these moving pieces uh aligned so that they're they're working working together off of off of one another. To that point, we will continue to meet with the city. We will create a planning committee where we will bring all of the different entities that are doing plans that touch downtown so that we can make sure that we understand where those plans are and how they feed into and how the blueprint can support.

We did one of those a little less than a year ago. We had I think between 25 and 30 plans represented by I'm going to say 20 different organizations or departments. So we will continue to do that um if not on a quarterly basis every six months. Cool.

And then we are also on the many of us are on those planning um committees. Thank you. Um we should we should close down Corkran Street at downtown Plaza. Um that would be that that is our our the civic heart, the civic and cultural

space um where people gather. And I I truly believe one day we'll we'll look back at pictures of the plaza today and we'll kind of laugh that we allowed this street to cut through the very center of this cultural and civic space. Um the plan calls for a shared street um and sort of resurfacing which could also I mean work just as well and you have ballards that go up and down. Um but that that is seems like um unless there's an issue with NC DOT and I don't know who owns the rightway there but but that seems like a lowhanging fruit that could really uh make a big change and a visible change.

you know, um, Council Member Ris, you talk a lot about kind of responding to things quickly and and that's kind of a lowhanging fruit. There are a lot of great ideas in this plan. Um, it's all very exciting. Um, one question I have. So, yesterday we looked at what's going to be one of our first proposed uh, bus rapid transit lines and it goes through downtown. And I wonder

if there's been communication, collaboration between transportation and the downtown uh, the blueprint 2035 planning team to to consider uh, bus only lanes or anything like that in downtown. Um, I've been on those meetings. Um there's a meeting scheduled for tomorrow to get an update. Um and yes, our our team did speak to the transportation department.

Um so we're aware of that. Um I have seen the recommendations um and we have weighed in on those. Okay. Um I'm really excited about the retail um engaging with uh with the re retail consultant.

Um I think that is so important because we have retail in a few different spots. sort of peppered around downtown, but it makes it difficult to kind of go downtown and, you know, shop at any particular I don't think people people go downtown for many different reasons. The I I don't think most people go downtown to full retail.

Um, so I'm very interested in that. Two questions there. One is thinking big picture, thinking of a retail street and, you know, entirely changing the built environment along a certain street, creating sort of an Elm Street type thing. in in Greensboro.

Is that in the cards with this retail retail consultant or are they thinking of something differently? And then second, um this is a question we get all the time, grocery store. Um and where where are we on that? Um that is a possibility, a retail street.

That's something we have talked about internally even before interface came on. It was something that was brought to the forefront by one of their partners um and access uh who really did a deep dive with the retail um the the possibility of um identifying a street that could be a retail street. Um I would say that we would bring the consultants on and have that conversation and have and have them let us know what would make the most sense. um being careful that we don't create

something to the detriment of retail in other places. Um so how we can ensure that perhaps we have multiple streets. Uh to the second question of the a grocery store, this retail um consultant would look at that as well. What what could we accommodate in downtown?

What would that look like? Where would be a good location for that? So, as I mentioned, national it is kind of looking at um do we have the support or if there's something in mind that we would like to go after, what would it take to go and recruit that particular grocery store. I will say that we have the co-op.

Um it seems like a long way. It is actually not that far, but it is not a pleasant walk. Um but the co-op the co-op on on Chapel Hill Street, there is a bodega in the downtown area. Um we've talked internally in the meantime if it if you couldn't do multiple little small boss like they have in New York when you just run in and get your eggs and your um milk. Um so there are a lot of things on the table but yeah that would be one of the things that we would look at um um a

retail grocery store what that would look like. Yeah and I think that's thank you so much for that. Uh I think that's also part of a larger conversation of um addressing and tackling food deserts in our city. Um which I mean I just hear about that constantly being difficult to to reach places and very excited about our OEWD hire and being able to tackle some some of those citywide uh challenges.

Um, so the the downtown master plan coming online uh late uh late summer, early fall. I'm excited about that. There's so so many great projects in there. Some of them I think are low hanging fruit.

Some are, you know, next 2, three, four, five years. Um aligned also with the unified development ordinance so that we can address things that are in the in the plan that um that are related to that. and um just really appreciate all the work that you do to activate uh downtown in this space that

is one of our most um uh special and prized spaces of our city. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. I don't have a lot of I guess one we'll get the the update or the blueprint here soon. I guess one thing that we've talked about before is not just Corkran, but thinking about everything in the in the loop with the parking garages at some point.

Yes. And you and I have had conversations about that would take a lot of coordination because of deliveries and things like that and wanting it to be um successful. I know the the streetery was one way of of doing some of that, right? Um I I don't know if that's addressed in the blueprint at all. the just like moving towards that space of sometimes just the inner core of downtown being automobile free that is not in the blueprint but I will say that the blueprint there there are places where it does get deep and there are other places where it gives us opportunity based on what what the conditions are to

to pursue things. Okay, thank you. Um and then I just have to say the ambassadors that I've seen out and about are are fantastic. It's been great to see like a I think just higher maybe not higher profile but you see them more often um you see them um be engaged in community.

I think it has helped that kind of promotion of safety downtown. Um, and I think in general, I mean, this is what we're experiencing. When we activate spaces, they become more safe, right? Because there's just more folks out and about.

Um, I know we're still struggling in downtown, but there are more people out and about than there were two years ago. So, I know we're clawing back and it feels hard, but um, I've certainly seen more folks. I know that there's a lot more. We're slowly getting back to that 2019 feeling.

Um, and I I'm really eager to see when the blueprint comes out and thanks for all your hard work. That's all. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Freeman. Thank you. Um, uh, yeah, a lot of information uh,

moving in the right direction. I just had one question really about the ambassadors and what their training looks like. I would have to ask Kenny to come up and talk about the training. Whatever it is, it's great.

They are so engaging. Big difference than whoever the last folks were. Hello, my name is Kenny Valenuela, director of clean and safe. Uh, so a lot of the training actually is due to the new company um that we've transitioned to.

Um, our prior company was a janitorial company, uh, local, which we loved having a local company, but we, you know, we needed to, um, excuse me, be, uh, a little bit more thoughtful about what our ambassador program looks like. Um, and they are trained on everything downtown Durham related. So um new developments that are coming on um restaurants where everything is deescalation techniques um and as well

as hospitality. That's why you see them out on the streets a lot more and um speaking with you know not only the the people walking down the the sidewalks but engaging with our businesses and and saying what's happening in the area. Yeah. Thank you.

I I think uh I was thinking more like around the lines of as ambassadors, they're kind of like the first people, the first person people see when something happens, they're looking for them. And so just kind of figuring out if there's a way to partner around getting CIT or racial equity training um with current staff and whoever. Oh yeah. So, they they have a they have a dayong video that they're looking uh that they uh uh that they watch before they even uh step foot onto our streets. And a lot of that has to do with like the deescalation techniques and and just being aware of their surroundings and things of that nature. And we we've even had conversations I don't know if I can step into this, but we've had conversations with with Ryan and his and

his heart team on how we can partner better and even get some of the training that they have um with uh being social workers uh with our with our ambassador team. That's great. You uh council member um Nicole, thanks for the presentation and just you know thanks for your leadership at downtown Durham Incorporated. I'm glad you're here and the team as well.

Thanks for for joining us everybody. Um you've done a great job and and I'm glad we got a lot of discussion and kudos for the ambassadors. They've done a great job and have been a real uh pleasant and refreshing presence downtown. So great stuff.

Um also want to thank you the I mean the the the blueprint is a great document. You've done a great job of doing a lot of engagement there, getting feedback. It's a comprehensive and dynamic plan. So I really appreciate that. I will say to Council Member Baker's comments, you know, the plan I think if you've seen it, you know, because we talked a lot about do we need a new plan for the downtown loop. It actually addresses some of the key intersections which I think to me is like to me is more in some ways more impactful than

trying to do a whole new plan for the loop. It addresses those key intersections that really like the one you mentioned in front of the library over there by the history museum. That could be a real impactful way to address the stuff that ills us with the with the downtown loop. So, thanks for that.

Um, as I think you all know, I am on the board of DDI. It's one of my most favorite boards. A dynamic and really engaging group. Um Oh, there's I didn't see you back there.

Um um I know you preceded me on there, Mayor PM. Thanks for your leadership there. Um I will say, you know, to this issue of downtown retail, we had a great discussion with your consultant at our last meeting about this issue of like vacant downtown retail um u uh spots. And I talked to to the plan director about this yesterday. We had a good discussion about whether there might be some ways we could address this through some kind of planning and zoning stuff or whether we also address the market reality that a lot of these big downtown buildings which are built by real estate investment trusts who really want the they want the residential piece. They do the they do the retail because we asked them to do it on the first floor but they're not in many cases not really

that committed to like filling that space. It's like a carrying cost on their balance sheet, right? And so we had a lot of discussion about what can we do to really find ways to activate and utilize those spaces because they are they do create sort of like you know kind of empty vacant spaces downtown that would be great to fill those. So I just want to say those are the kind of discussions we have at the board meetings that are really like that are really um thoughtful and really address some of the key issues and very in very um thoughtful and innovative ways to address some of the the stuff we're in downtown.

So thank you for all that. Um, we didn't mention that the the the bid tax, but certainly you've done a great job of getting support from the business, the downtown businesses to to support that seven cent bid tax. So, um, that's great stuff. So, yeah, we look forward to the plan in the fall.

Keep up the good work and it's pleasure working with you. Thanks, April. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, colleagues, and Nicole. It's always good to see you. Good to see Um yeah, one one of the blessings of this job, having been here for a minute, I've had an opportunity to serve on a bunch of different committees and and and uh task force, but um to uh council member

R's point, I think one of my favorite assignments has been serving on the board, the DDI, and being able to see just the the growing impact and efficacy of of of the DD of DDI under your leadership. um the ideas that were talked about come to fruition. Just the the the incredible growth of our ambassadors. They look good.

They present well. It's just you can really just kind of track how we've changed uh downtown in just a few years. So, I really really enjoyed that. Was council member Riss one of the mayor and I went back and forth.

I was really a little reluctant to give that assignment up, but the Thank you. No, no, absolutely. It was time. It's you got to churn.

You got to churn. And with my growing responsibilities with the league, it was time. So, I'm glad that we've got a fresh, talented voice there. Um, and thanks to the team who's here as well. So, just two quick questions. Um, and I know when I was on the board, one of the things we we talked about um a bit was was the um the growing issue of aggressive pan handling and how do we

address that issue in accordance with our values as as as Durham. Um, with respect to the the safety ambassadors, I'm wondering without telegraphing too much. Are there and council member Freeman sort of was what I thought was approaching this question with her question. I thought it was a great question about their training.

Are these ambassadors getting any specialized kind of protocols when it comes to aggressive pan handling? Um, other than observe and report, what what will be our posture when it's observed? the current um ambassadors, correct me Kenny if I'm wrong, but the current ambassadors um have have limited training um and how to interact um how to call for assistance um determining whether it's a heart call or whether it's a a public safety uh the safety ambassadors actually will be a step above that. So they would be trained in deescalation um how to interact with um they will not be arresting of course they will not be carrying any kind of weapon but it would be a a um individual

that that would feel comfortable walking into spaces and being able to walk and encourage people to move on um things of that nature but they would be trained specifically as security. Okay. All right. Um and we would rely on block byblock who has done this across the country.

um they they are doing similar programs on a much larger scale in in um cities as large as Baltimore. Uh so so they have a proven track record that all of their ambassadors go through based on the role that they would be serving whether it's hospitality, clean, security, safety andor landscaping. So um they they have a proven record. Right.

Right. They um uh and I you know this not many people know this in a previous life. Um, I actually work for New York's bid, Grand Central Partnership, and 34th Street Partnership and Brian Park Restoration Corp. Um, and I got to tell it's some of the largest in the country, uh, bids. I got to tell you, our our ambassadors will put any of them to shame. Uh, just their their their uniform, their their their personalities,

um, the way they move about. So, it's really a great thing to see. I do have a question. Um, final question.

Blueprint 2035. Uh, I'm a person who's thinking about moving to Durham. What is keep Durham Durham mean? I mean, I know what it means, but what does it mean?

Well, you know what it means. Yeah, I know what it means, but what does it mean as a policy maker? What does that mean to me as a policy maker? As we were having our our public input meetings, it was it was very clear that um um the individuals that came and we had businesses, we had brokers, we had developers, we had residents, we had people from out of downtown, as I mentioned, we had uh Spanish speaking.

Um so we worked closely with Elenturo and the Latino Credit Union um to to ensure that we had all those voices. And what we heard is that when you're in Durham, you know you're in a in a in a special place. um people can feel that there is a

um reverence for the culture that exists, for the history that is constantly uplifted. Um there was an appreciation for the intentionality about filling spaces with localowned businesses. Um that those owners are in the spaces when you come in and you can communicate with them. Um there it it is walkable.

Um that people are friendly. So I think when we say Durham is Durham, we see a lot of things happening, you know, um in in the Triangle area and some great things. Uh we get told multiple times downtown Durham needs a downtown Kerry Park. Downtown Kerry Park is absolutely amazing.

It is phenomenal. I'm not going to say it's not. It belongs in Kerry and it fits very well with Kerry. We have a wonderful park called Durham Central Park that is very intentional about the festivals that it brings. They have a a cultural feel. They are they are um specifically targeted to bringing the

people that love Durham and want that ability to dance in the street to come and dance in the street. Um we still have at the Durham Central Park, even though we have new people coming in who complain about the drums, we still have both Brazilian drum groups who practice in Durham Central Park. That is what Durham is and that is the thing that DDI wants to ensure that we do need to grow. We definitely need to grow.

It is hurting us that we don't have any commercial re uh development even on the books to come out of the ground. They might be on the books but they're not coming out of the ground. So we we need to grow and we need to find ways to grow but we also as we grow we need to look at ways that we maintain that and we don't lose that that we don't you know that we just become one more downtown that looks like any other downtown. And for Durham, that is Black Wall Street, black culture, black heritage, Latino credit, Latino, Latino heritage, culture, and businesses.

And there's a mix of all of that in the downtown area. Doors open. Come in. We don't care. An honoring of

LGBTQ. Um, you are who you are. Come in downtown Durham. Be who you are.

No one's going to throw shade. That is what keep Durham Durham means. That's what it means to us. Um, and I believe that's what we heard when we had the um public public meetings.

That is what we're striving for. That's a hard thing to do. Um, that goes to the retail that as we do the retail, it's not just going to be a hey, we got these spaces. Why don't you come and bring your thing?

It would be very intentional that we would identify that as a business that shares the same goals and mission of not just DDI, but I think we are in lock step with the city and the county about those mission and goals. We would actually go out and recruit them. So, it's not like, oh, Lululemon. Obviously, I don't shop there a lot.

Isn't that what it is? Um, so that's not one that's coming, obviously. Um, Lululemon. Um, got a lot of shots fired today, Ja.

I know I carry online, too. But go ahead. No, I nothing about Carrie. It is a beautiful park. It's just it it belongs in Carrie. And I

I I will end by saying that that's what makes living in the triangle so amazing. that if that's what you want, there's a place for that. If you want um what Raleigh, if you wanted Glennwood South, there's a place that you can go and have that. If you want culture, and I'm not saying that the others don't have it, but we are very, very intentional about leading with that.

Um and even in these days and times, we continue to have conversations around diversity, equity, inclusion. We have not stepped back from that. So, there's a final shot. I'm glad I No, you have at it.

No, I'm glad I I'm glad you said that out loud. You know, as when I go back, you're going to back things later on. Absolutely. No.

Well, I it's important because, you know, when I go back to being a private citizen, I can play my own role in preserving those values and making sure that I'm an ambassador. Personally, as a policy maker, I want to make sure that, you know, we're not passing laws or ordinances that violate that concept uh that do violence to it. some even

inadvertently, not not always purposely, but but how do we maintain that with the decisions we make? I'll end this way. I think one of one of the con the when we were putting this together and a consultant was doing interviews, there was a I think it was DDI, uh a consultant said to me, I'll never forget this. She actually kind of took issue with the term placemaking.

Uh I forgot I wish I could remember the alternative term, but that each place has an organic story already. And sometimes placemaking invites us to to graft onto something rather than kind of search for what was already there. I didn't know whether you called it place enhancement or whatever, but it was a really great term. But we call it placekeeping.

Place keeping. Okay. That that that that that's probably it. And everything you said I think beautifully kind of magnifies what that means. Um, we're welcoming and there's that tension with a growing city, welcoming new folk, welcoming uh new neighbors who are willing to honor who we are and what we are. If you

if you have a problem with, you know, black and brown folks celebrating the street or LGBTQ folk living their lives fully out loud, Durham's probably not the place for you. Um, no, not pro, it's not the place for you. Um, so, so just as a policy maker, I I just wanted to hear you kind of expound because if I was reading this document as someone considering moving, you know, I want there to be truth in advertising. What do they mean by keep Durham Durham?

And I think you've beautifully stated who we are and what we are and what I pray will always remain. So, and I would I would add on to that the thing one of the amazing things that happened um a couple years ago when the Joyce opened, DHA opened the Joyce and their intentionality of naming that after an individual who sued them um because she was being wrongfully or or evicted and said, "I have the same rights as someone living in a private apartment. " And it was a court case and it went a long long way. DHA when they had a new their

first new building that they've built in how many years they named it after her. And I don't know that I don't know that there are other cities that would have done that. They would have tried to kept that kept that quiet or Yeah, that happened. There's a plaque of of that individual in their in their in their multi-purpose room and and they they uplift that.

That's what Durham is. So very Durham. Thank you. Good to see you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I yield back. It's Joyce.

Call it. It's That's the Joyce. Joyce. Oh, okay.

You didn't say his name, but Oh, okay. The Joyce. Should we add the document? Do you want to call it like keep Durham dope?

Is that what you're call I've gotten some gray hairs behind that? I'm willing to grow more. Um cuz Durham is dope. Uh thank you for this information and and just, you know, I I live downtown and I see and engage with the ambassadors on a daily basis.

and um just some of the nicest folks. Sorry, it's gross. Um some of the

nicest folks you'll ever meet and just really engaging. I love engaging with them. I think you hit it on the mark. Um as mayor prom say, I think the planning commission got this one right.

Um, I think you got this one right, you know, just with, you know, really characterizing Durham and our resilience, but also our defiance and uh and and stubbornness to just hold on to our culture. Um, I don't know if this helps you or not, but I'm with Council Member Baker and I really want to like uh and colleagues, I'm throwing this out there unannounced, but I would like to go ahead and give staff, you know, some direction from council to consider a plan to uh closing some of those city- owned streets. Uh, not saying any action today obviously, but uh that that Corkran area, that Corkran Street right there seems to be Plaza Market Street. Um, we have a lot of roads that are necessary and it's not a long distance to go around. Um, but you know, I'm

hating on Bryant Park right now. I want our mini Bryant Park. Um, I'm a bit um aggressive on this. I want Foster Street to be a linear park and totally closed and um just just that hill that goes down and just make it, you know, an extension of Central Park.

But that's just me. But I m if colleagues you guys wouldn't mind if the staff could at least look at some options or plans around what that segment of Corkran in market. Um and obviously we have some parking and the garage entrance and all that stuff to consider but that's what the study or you know staff looking into it would provide. I I would ask if you I would ask because there's some information in there.

So if if blueprint calls for like a shared street Yeah. And there's more detail. So if if we could have a followup once the blueprint I don't want to get ahead of that. Have you have you read the book abundance? Yeah. I have read pieces of

it. Yes. Yes. You understand why I'm like trying to move this quick because we take too long to do stuff.

But I I would agree. I am I am right there with you with that blueprint in hand that's adopted by the city. So all right. I'll hold off on that request until we we receive that.

Uh thank you so much for this. I don't I don't have any commentary. I I follow closely what you all do and I think the only request I would have is what you're already mentioning is uh you know convening of all of these plans. Everybody has a plan and I just, you know, there we need an overall vision for what's happening and and it's important that these plans work, you know, in concert with one another so that we aren't just being disjointed or discombobulated on how downtown is being reimagined.

Yes. Um I'll remain closely engaged in that just because I'm really interested in it. Um but yeah, any way I can help as mayor, just let me know. But thank you for the work you all do. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all for the continued support of DDI. Um we have enjoyed being a partner with you for the last 30 plus years. Um and we look forward to continuing to do our great work in downtown with you.

Um with your amazing team. We do not do this alone. Um so we we have wonderful relationships with a number of the people who are in the room and who may be watching. Um so thank you.

Um and we will be back in front of you with the blueprint if not before. Thank you. Great. All right.

Well, the agenda was much shorter today than yesterday, but boy did we go longer. Um, I will uh give it to No, let me um have closing remarks if any. Council members, any closing remarks? Yeah, go ahead.

Do this is probably a question for staff. Do you all feel like because we have that tenative Okay, that's my only question. He's gonna he's going to close out with that. Yep.

One comment just back to your comment, Mr. Mayor, about about the different plans because you're right. We

got a we got the downtown Durham blueprint, we got the cultural arts roadmap, right? We we got the DAP study. We got a lot a lot of plans. Um I have talked with the manager about this because there have been I have heard some concerns from different folks about, well, we got these different plans.

Do they all are they all talking to one another? And so the manager comments, if I if I'm not if I can if I'm saying it properly, correct me if I'm wrong, is that in some ways that it's kind of our job as leaders to sort of like pull it all together. So I just I want to ask that question and put it out here because I think there if there's a role for the council to play in making sure those plans all talk to each other, I think we should lean into that. thought.

Um, yeah, I think I'll mostly endorse that to say that I think my my intention is to say that when there are there are plans that are created out in the community that the city did not commission or create, it is at the discretion of the council how how much you find those plans to be influential. You just heard from uh from DDI that it's their intention for us to adopt that plan. Obviously that gives

you a very uh clear policy uh decision over that plan. To the extent that there are other plans out there, I think we look for you to tell us whether you find ideas in those plans compelling. Obviously, I think it's it's important at the staff level that we have awareness of a lot of those documents. But whether or not you as a council want to consider them binding or influential on your policy decisions, I do think there's a fair amount of discretion that the council has in considering this.

I guess the issue too is that it's it's not only like once the plans are adopted, you know, endorsing or or making sure we sort of act on different parts of them. It's also in the process of doing the plans, you know, that that that's where there's because if once the plans are adopted, they don't quite agree. It's a little bit more difficult to make them talk, make them sort of align versus as these things are being developed. This one that the study of the DAP, right, the cultural road map is also still in process. seems like that's the time if we want to make sure these things do align that that's part of that's the time really to get involved to make sure that does happen. I will

say I I'm requesting a convening of all of those entities. I've been working closely with Susan Susan Amy Nicole and I meet quite often um I'm I'm not as tapped in on the feasibility study of the DAP but I just American Tobacco there there's a lot of players and also some property uh private land owners as well. But I just kind of bring I I say we want to make sure they these plans work together but there is some work of bringing them together already that I know I've been you know convening and I could welcome everybody into that conversation two or less three or less. Baker. Yeah, I would just also add that is also the role of community planning in the planning department um is to make sure that they are the ones who know a little bit about a lot and are are playing that convening role and have a lens into all the different planning process that are happening and making sure that they're speaking to to one another. So, um, I think we need to we need to make sure that I mean we're playing that role, but also making sure

that, you know, that that role is being played by people who are working full-time and and are engaged in the planning process. So, is that happening right now? And I mean, is that part of the community planning work? That's just the traditional function of a plan department, city plan uh, planning departments.

He was Sarah Sarah played a I mean you were DC city planner like you're like before you were director right this is what you were doing you were like Yep. Thank you. So planning has traditionally been the tip of the spear on coordinating a lot of efforts. We're not the only entity that does planning, but we certainly do um we are actively involved when other organizations or departments do their planning efforts. We do try and keep an eye out for kind of big picture. And to us, everything should roll up to the comprehensive

plan, right? And so we're looking for conformance, especially since that is a very recent plan for conformance with the big goals of that plan as it trickles down into these other things. But we are we are always um partners at whatever table is set by a sister or brother institution or agency or department in these plans. Um a lot of times you will notice in our plans there are aspects from all these other entities and plans that trickle into them as well.

So it is work that we currently do. All right. Uh any other closing comments? Yeah, go ahead. Um yeah, we got a bit derailed earlier talking about um different things, but I do want to bring back the request about um day shelter specifically as a as a lowcost barrier. And I know that there might be some um addressing of that at

at a later time. So, I'm happy to put a pin in it until our next work session, but I'm just letting y'all know that it is a priority of mine. So, if it's not being funded elsewhere, I'm going to ask that it comes back into our budget. It's a pretty low threshold.

It's something we can do immediately to address that issue, and I'm it's top of my mind. So, I'm just raising that again. Um, but happy again to put a pin in it until Thursday. Right.

May. Thank you, uh, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank, um, the manager and to this incredible this is is really, you can't overstate just how impressive this team is, um, that we have here at the city working for us.

Mr. Manager, full disclosure, I was I was when I looked at who was going to be presenting before us, I was concerned, well, the police department's going to come, the fire department's not coming. These, the biggest departments, but hearing Yeah. But hearing your explanation as to the folk who actually had really substantive kind of um changes or or impacts in this

budget um has been borne out through these discussions. So I I want you to know I am totally at ease with the way uh this menu was set up and who's come before us. I know and and if there are questions about those departments I you know it doesn't end here. Your lines of communication are always open.

So I want to thank you for crafting what I think was a very effective with your team uh a very effective um presentation couple of days of budget which will make our jobs if not easier it'll certainly make it more uh we'll be in a better informed position to make our decision. So thank you very much and congratulations again as you continue to uh trod towards your first uh approved budget crossing the $700 million threshold I might add. Finally, Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for your leadership and for your temperament.

And to my colleagues, I want to say also, you know, every night when I uh when I greet you all, I I intentionally say my honorable colleagues. And I don't say that as as formulaically or it's just as theater. I mean that um I believe each of you are are honorable. And one one of the things I always remind myself of colleagues that no matter how far apart we are or

how much we disagree, disagreement does not mean dismissal. Because on any given day for each of you there are literally thousands of people who agree with you, who supported you, who voted for you. It would be foolish to dismiss a person with that much support and who has that much representation behind them. So I listen very intently and I take very seriously what each of you say and I honor it because when each of you speak, you are literally representing thousands of people.

uh it would be to our detriment to dismiss each other or any one of us on any given day on any issue because so many of our residents and neighbors uh feel vested in you and support you. I carry that with me. I hope that we each carry that uh for each other. Um and for the public watching, don't get it twisted.

Uh we'll be joking and talking about each other's families and vacation plans after this stuff is over um because we know how to compartmentalize. So, I want to thank each of you for this time of engagement, for your passion, for your love. We each

volunteered for scrutiny that most human beings would run away from. Um, but here we are um doing the best we can for our city, the city that we all love. So, I want to thank each of you for your service, my honorable colleagues of this council, and thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yeah.

just um because I forgot to say it. I want to say thank you so much to all of the staff every day, but the staff that um put in uh so much work and effort into organizing these meetings today and yesterday. I mean, it's just it's a ton of work and um really really appreciate it and all the work that's gone into the budget. Um it's I mean, it's so much work. So, thank you so much for everything that you're doing and everything that's gone into this and um for very smooth two very smooth um days of um these uh budget meetings.

Council member, thank you. I just want to say thank you to all staff here and for all staff who didn't present this round. Um this is a we are in a really good place. Um, we've got a little bit more work.

I know we have a couple outstanding things that folks want to try and figure out, but um, a lot is happening with this budget. It's a big year. Uh, and I have to say, uh, I'm really proud of everyone who's sitting at this DAS and everyone who works for the city of Durham. We are living in some pretty weird times.

And, um, everyone who works for the city shows up every day and they give their all for the residents of this city and this community. And there's a lot of people in this country who are in government who are not doing that anymore. And so I hope residents of Durham realize that there are a lot of folks delivering on your behalf and they will continue to do so. So, uh, always thankful for your good work. I would just also just echo Council Cabaro's comments and saying thank you

as well as all the others. Um, I did want to just um appreciate I think um we have staff in the room who's even retired um coming back to see what's going on here. And I I just I just want to say like this has been an honor and um truly like this is the eighth budget that I've sat through and it's incrementally gotten to the point where I don't have to say as much because what I want is already baked in. But I will say that that this has been a process that has been much more I guess fluid and encompassing the the discussions we actually needed to have.

And I really want to appreciate the city manager for shifting it a little bit and making us uh do what do the hard things hard and the easy things easy uh so that this process was a was a lot better. Thank you. One last question. There's the the um we still have this open time next Thursday, right? He's going to address it

right here again. Like right on it, right? So, no, thank you all. Uh thank you to the amazing staff.

Um thank you for giving us the luxury of being, you know, talking heads and you all, you know, like making the magic happen. Um I I I wouldn't want your job. I'm sure you wouldn't want our job. Uh, so I think we're all in the right place, making it work.

Um, yeah, I just really appreciate you all. Uh, this is this is really hard. Um, I want to thank my colleagues. Uh, I know I can get passionate about some things.

I know each of us can get passionate about some things. Um, and I even get upset, you know, I don't always show it. Um, but sometimes it it just comes out, you know, like like any other human. Um, but I I just, man, I I wouldn't I wouldn't want to work with um anyone else right

now to be honest with you. And you know, um I know we disagree a lot sometimes on especially in zoning cases. And Council Member Cook, I'm going to pick on you for a second. Um, you know, some folks they watch the meetings, you know, it's good for TV sometimes.

Uh, and and you know, I I'll get some some friends or supporters or whatever to say, gosh, man, like the lady to ask all the questions like, she never vote with you. Like, what's her problem? Like, but do you know that she actually does the work? Like, she she puts in the work and I appreciate that.

Um, I mean, I wish I could like buy her a milkshake and get her to like vote with me on some things, but I I I just really appreciate the work that that each of you all put into it, you know. Um, I I really do. And I appreciate each and every last one of you all. I don't think you're bad people. And I know we um had a tough conversation earlier. And again, as I

said, I hope it doesn't come off that I I think you don't care about, you know, the kids in this city. That's not my point. Uh but my my intent is to make sure that discomfort around gun violence is present in our work that we do. Uh because I I do want to mobilize this discomfort to other bodies of government so that we can all feel it and hopefully that'll fuel our energy around a strategy that is responsive.

Um I don't want to be patient but I know it takes time. Uh, but you know, I just appreciate, you know, being able to have these tough conversations and also still respectfully be able to work with one another. If we were not able to do that, then I would be worried. Uh, so um, and I expect to be pulled along in areas that you don't hear me talk about enough.

You know, you don't hear me talk about a day shelter enough. Uh, and Council Member Cook, you keep bringing it up. So, you know, we just bring each other along and I just really appreciate that. Um, with that being said, I think, you know, it goes back

to our flag. I open up with this and this is uh my first budget as mayor and just what our flag represents. The royal blue represents courage. Uh, the red represents action and progress.

The gold represents high quality and all growth. White represents high ideals. The stars, the stars represents the arts, commerce and industry, education, medicine, human relations, sports and recreation, preservation of heritage. So, at the end of the day, despite how tough these conversations are, we are living in our values, and I'm so grateful for each of you.

And so, um, with that being said, again, staff, thank you. Colleagues, thank you. Thank you to the public. uh for the folks that are a little bit happy, a little bit sad, uh and and all in between. Uh grateful for everyone as uh Mr. Manager, you have provided us a process that works and I appreciate the the you know,

heading toward the efficiency. Uh and we can say something that a lot of city governments can't say. You know, we we are we are becoming much more efficient and finding more capacity to do more things with less. So, uh, thank you for for being genius on this and we'll close with your remarks.

Thank you, mayor. So, uh, again, thank you for all the, uh, kind compliments to staff. They are certainly certainly deserving of it. Uh, and and you, you also are deserving of, uh, praise for these two days.

Your conversations, your guidance are extremely helpful for us. I did want to provide a summary of where we think we are at uh and to seek either your concurrence or correction on those items. So, uh as you know, uh today concludes two days of work sessions. At this time, we are not aware of or uh in my conversations with the budget director, we we did not capture any specific direction to change elements of the proposed budget to date. There is

one item that uh we committed to bring more analysis back on and that was the part-time Durham minimum liberal wage discussion. So we have that as a follow-up. Uh the there are four other topics that we heard discussed but didn't necessarily get specific direction. So I wanted to name those.

Uh when we first convened yesterday, there was some discussion that it may be a miss to not have any conversation about housing or economic development. So there are those two topics. Uh there was an inquiry on the Durham affordable uh affordable uh loan fund. Uh and then there was a discussion of low-income homeowner relief. So, what I wanted to do at this point, if if there was only one topic, uh, that being the part-time Durham minimum livable wage, I think we could add that as an agenda item to the June 5th work session in the afternoon and not convene in the morning. If of

those other four topics you wanted a presentation similar to what you received on these two days, my recommendation would be that we use that placeholder meeting time on the morning of June 5th. Uh and then we could just move that part-time DMLW conversation to the morning. Um so I think that's a decision point for council. either do the one item at work session and handle the other items either throughformational updates uh or convene in the morning and have presentations so that council can give us direction.

So, let me look back to you on that. June 5th really would be the the the last opportunity to give us direction to make changes before we bring you a budget for adoption at your second regular council meeting in June. Any preference? Go ahead. Um, it is I just want to be real clear that it is not my preference to be here all day on Thursday because my whole family is going to be in town and y'all already know the drill. Um, however, I of the topics you mentioned, I am interested in the conversation around the low-inccome homeowner relief, tax

relief, whichever combination that I'm supposed to say those words in. Um, though I don't feel like we are able to tackle that as a city by ourselves since it's a joint city county program. So, I'm not really sure even if we were to extend the day what that conversation could bring in that morning. I think it's primarily going to beformational update on how the program is being utilized.

If you had questions about what the current thresholds are for accessing the program, I think we'd be prepared to provide that information. We can either do that in a presentation. We can also prepare a memorandum that summarizes it for you. Yeah, I don't think I have any questions around around it as it currently is.

But I am interested in in in having some conversation about whether we need to change some of the thresholds. But I don't think that that's a conversation where if we came on Thursday, I don't think we could accomplish that on Thursday morning. So I it is not my ask maybe that we come on Thursday morning to talk about that. But I do think that that is a priority of mine um to have that conversation and

whatever research we would need um done could be prepared in a memo and delivered to us at some point and maybe council member Cabio can speak to it more. I think that it has to go to joint city county. That's the venue that we would have any conversation with county where there's co-unding and the the agenda for that meeting on the 10th is already rather full and I don't think we're meeting again until August. So, I don't know if it would get solved before passage of our upcoming fiscal budget.

Yeah, I think that's like exactly my point is that I don't foresee that it but I I am interested in that as a priority. Um, so I just don't want it to fall off this list just because I don't want to do it this Thursday. If I could just ask um if it could just be included in a memo just making sure that it's included in our water bills like it's it's been in the past. just kind of like the methods we're using to make sure that people know what's happening with it. That's the main questions I have main questions I have around it. Um I would just also

add um for housing and economic development. Uh I have some questions but I don't know that they're budgetary like as far as this budget and uh I think in a work session in August or what have you afterwards is fine. um for the affordable home loan front. If we could just get an update, just numbers uh number of applications, number approved and processed, that would be enough for me.

And then on the day shelter thing, I do think we'll probably need to revisit it some way, shape, or form, but that's it. Um yeah. So I do think yeah I'm not looking for for um extending our our Thursday more but I also think there's some important issues on the table. I do think on the housing I know that we have a reorganization happening there new director coming on. I think and maybe this is not on the fifth maybe but at some point soon I think we need an update on like where Forever Home is wrapping up I guess this year maybe next

right and sort of getting like a where are we with all the sort of like what are the sort of what have we produced with with the with the 95 million where are we with that getting an update on that where we stand with that and what are sort of outstanding items would be really good but again have to be on the fifth um I will say on the affordable housing loan fund um staff did provide had to provide a memo for us that came out along with the agenda for before yesterday's meeting started and so the downtown affordable housing loan fund is I'm sorry Durham affordable housing loan fund is mentioned in there I think it's a little bit unclear actually so I would love to I would love to have a discussion about that it may not I don't know if that's a discussion we need to have here or just with you directly I think there's essentially the memo said there's money in the dedicated housing fund um I think there was a reference to the money having been expended the first 2 million um I think I think it's worth noting that the city gave a $2 million loan to the Durham Affordable Housing Loan Fund. So, the money is not it's not it's been lent out, but it's not like gone, right? It's been lent out. The

request is for more money to allow us to quickly acquire affordable rental properties maybe coming out of tax credit status as they come in the market so we can get them before market players get them. And so if there's money that's in the dedicated housing fund but is not in the budget, I guess I guess the request would be from me on behalf of the folks that manage DOL to like can we get an additional million dollars if it's in the dedicated housing fund placed in Dolph to allow us more capacity to acquire properties that may come on the market. So that's the Yeah. So I don't know if you I'll summarize after.

Okay. um housing and economic development. Um big issues, they need a lot of thinking. I would say let's let's start tackling them intentionally and have some dedicated time for those conversations when we come back.

Mhm. That's what I would that's what I would say. Um I I think we need to spend a lot of time on those two issues.

Um uh the I I will be curious if by Thursday we have more information from the county regarding the the day shelter. That's all I have. Go ahead. Thank you.

I think that once we get um directors in those departments and they've had a little bit of time, I would love to get an in-depth kind of update and and what what their vision is going to be and how it aligns. And I don't imagine that being ready um probably before, you know, midfall. but just putting it on a work session and letting us have the space to really talk about it. Um and and getting those updates on where we are in Forever Home and all of these other spaces um um that I don't think we need um I think for me the big question marks aren't going to get solved on on at a at an additional work session. I think they're beyond kind of the the guardrails of of this budgetary process that we're in. Um, and I feel like there's one other and I do want to hear from the county and where they ultimately landed on on

the day shelter or not. Thank you all colleagues. Yeah, for me to the direct issue as to whether or not anything I've heard um leads me to think that we need to massage or alter the budget as proposed, the answer is no. Uh, for me, like Council Member Freeman alluded, I think it's my eighth I guess our eighth budget.

There are always conversations that in which council members, individual council members, I've done it, or even several council members have some issue that's burning um that that we have conversations. Sometimes it's an academic conversation, sometimes it's it's it's substantive, but for me, nothing that we've talked about um can't be addressed outside of passing this budget, whether it's administratively, for example, with with respect to the uh low-inccome tax uh program. The questions of how ownorous applying for it and thresholds have been things we've addressed historically. My guess is that the current iteration of it is

reflective of some tweaks that were made because of those very concerns and I don't think that addressing those issues um those can be addressed administratively outside of the budgetary program that that's within our purview to do that one and two with respect to the um the uh the day shelter I used I used to be on the board of of of interfaith hospitality network before it became families moving forward and they used to operate a day shelter so I understand the importance uh of it very much and it's an issue that's near and dear to my heart. But based upon what I've heard from staff uh and even some of our colleagues, I don't know what that $50,000 would would be for it. I don't know who the people are right now, what what their profile is. Talked about possibly having to issue RFPs for it.

Um and I'm not if it's how do I want to phrase it? I'm not I don't want to just do kind of a token check writing to kind of telegraph that we're um taking it seriously if we don't have an actual plan for the money. I certainly support

the strategic housing uh plan that we're looking at that will give us a blueprint on how to uh deal with it um long-term effectively. But I just don't know what obviously it's not a lot of money. 50 grand is not a lot of money. I just don't know what what what it would do right now, what it would be for other than us saying that we've allocated $50,000 for a day shelter.

Again, we don't know what the county is going to do as well. So, all of that taken in total, uh, for me, nothing crosses the threshold where it would affect this budget as it's currently presented. Uh, so therefore, yeah, I I have no there's no need for me to meet on anything relative to the budget. always welcome to talk uh about issues but the budget remains unaffected to me.

Thank you. Uh just yeah in closing um for me I think actually I think council member Freeman verbalized it well. Uh I don't have any budgetary uh holdups or

questions rather. I just do have uh some requests for more information. I would like the demographic information or the demographic breakdown on the housing side of things, the homelessness uh and also the demographic breakdown of the um like who are the folks that are getting these jobs, the entry level jobs um like yeah part-time employees with the uh minimum wage. Um other than that, I I don't I don't need an additional work session.

I actually prefer not to. Um I have a colleague that's uh you know has a wedding coming up and want to give them much time as possible. Um okay the real reason my anniversary is also coming up. So to get out of here as soon as possible have a flight right after that meeting.

Uh so prefer not to be in there all day. So uh the one item if you need to put on the work session agenda let's do that. Um everything else I think that you know we could Thank you. We'll we'll

take the direction to provide updates. Uh I I concur with the sentiment that I think we'll be in a better place to have an informed conversation with council on matters of the the strategy around economic development, strategy around the new housing and neighborhood services department uh with new directors in place and that's something that we are uh very eagerly pursuing uh as we speak. So we will plan to come back to council in the fall on those topics. We'll provide either written or verbal updates on the affordable loan fund to close any gaps in information we provided.

Make sure we give you a clearer sense of where what the current status is of that program and our ability to support future rounds of funding as well as the lowincome homeowner uh relief program. And then finally, we will have an agenda item to present information requested on the part-time DMLW issue and we will add that to your uh afternoon work session agenda. that item may come out uh late because most of the other items on that agenda are already finalized. So you may

see that added just before the meeting, but we'll we'll work on that to have a conversation ready. And then obviously you have your budget public hearing uh Monday night and so you may have other items you wish to discuss, but those discussions can take place at the work session if needed. Thank you. So could I on the affordable housing loan fund just on that one?

So the memo from staff clarified where the money is, right? It's not in the budget. So to me, this this may be a budget item. If the money is in the dedicated housing fund, it just needs to be moved to the budget.

Yeah, we do that. I actually I've I've got a few requests out for staff and there's a a meeting that is scheduled later today with some of the funding partners there. So I I want to download kind of their position, our position before I before I give you a recommendation. But I I will get you that information prior in time to have any input or feedback into the budget process before budget adoption. So my my commitment to you is to make sure we give you that information before you have to make any final decisions on the budget. Um I'm just reluctant to give

more detail verbally until I have a few other missing pieces of information and to make sure that I understand it as fully as possible. All right, colleagues, thank you. It's been a great meeting. Day two budget work sessions. We are adjourned at 3:25.